Harry Potter and A Different Kind of Magic
by Candela89
Summary: An Ancient Family takes in young Harry to save both him and themselves. He gets to grow up with a loving family, consisting of his Adopted Mother, Father and sister, and a House Elf unlike any other. Harry grows up learning two kinds of magic. It will be a HP/HG fic first and foremost, but may evolve into HP/HG/someone else, Dumbledore and selective Weasley bashing.
1. Prologue - A Night of Changes

**Harry Potter**

**and A Different Kind of Magic**

**_A/N: Ok, so I've updated this chapter... and HOPEFULLY I caught all the misspellings and grammar errors. The spell checker I used originally wasn't worth Dragon Shit, so I hope my chapters will be more readable in the future (just my luck if I manage to misspell this message). I've also included a small section concerning Irja.  
And Thank You everyone that have read and commented and what not. It makes writing ten times more fun._**

_**A/N 2: New Update! Fixed the confusing discussion about Soul Fragments/Soul Shards/Soul Stones/Horcrux'es... at least enough for now, a more detailed explanation will be given in a later chapter.**_

**_Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTING!_**

* * *

_Chapter 0 – Prologue – A night of changes_

It was almost midnight at number four Privet Drive, and a tabby cat was sitting on the sidewalk looking down the street into the darkness, not moving in the slightest. Suddenly their was a man standing in the corner of the street, where a second ago there was only empty air. Albus Dumbledore was dressed in purple robes, and a long cloak. He looked ancient with his long silvery white beard and hear, but his eyes where bright and twinkled behind his half-moon shaped glasses.

He pulled something that looked like a lighter from his robes and clicked it, causing the nearby light pole to wink out. He clicked the lighter looking device again and again, until all the lights on the street was put out.

He caught sight of the cat and chuckled. "I should have known to find you here, Professor McGonagall."

The cat morphed into an stern looking woman, dressed in the same style as Dumbledore, though hers were emerald green, her glasses square shaped, and her hair was black and tied into a knot. "Are you really sure about this Albus? I've watched these muggles all day, and they are the worst sort of people I have ever come across."

"The Dursleys are the boys only living relatives, Minerva."

McGonagall was about to reply when a sound caught her attention, the sound of a engine roaring in the distance. Both she and Dumbledore turned to watch as a headlight up in the sky approached, and as it began to decent towards the ground they could see it was a flying motorcycle. When motorcycle came to a stop in front of the elderly par they saw the enormous man that rode it had a tiny bundle in his lap.

"Evening Professor Dumbledore. Professor McGonagall" said the huge man as he turned of the motorcycle.

"Good Evening, Hagrid. I trust you had a good flight?" greeted Dumbledore.

"Yep. Little fella fell asleep soon after we took of." Hagrid said as he gently gave the bundle to Dumbledore.

"He will be famous Albus, there will be plenty of family's that would gladly take him in." said McGonagall, trying to change Dumbledore's mind.

"Which is precisely why he must stay with his relatives. He need to grow up away from his fame." responded Dumbledore. He walked up to the door and lay down the bundle on the doorsteps, and turned around at the sound of sobbing. "Don't cry Hagrid, the boy is better of with his relatives. You will see him again."

"I'know Professor" Hagrid managed to say between sobs.

Dumbledore turned back to the boy on the doorsteps and put a letter on his tiny form. He turned around and walked out of the yard. there he stopped, and looked at the boy one more time. "Good luck, Harry Potter."

With his final words he turned and walked back to were he had appeared earlier, took out the lighter looking device and the lights winked back to life, just as Hagrid began to ascend with the motorcycle into the air. He and McGonagall disappeared just as suddenly as Dumbledore had first appeared.

* * *

A raven sitting on a chimney across the street watch as Dumbledore and the other left the child at the doorsteps and then all leave. After watching the baby sleep for a few minutes it jumped of its perch and soundlessly descend down to the walkway leading up to the door. there it stood another moment to look at the boy within the blankets. Black smoke started to emerge from between its feathers and it slowly begins to float upwards from the walkway as its feather starts to extend. Once about three feet into the air the raven bird began to change form, similar to how the tabby cat had turned into McGonagall earlier, yet differently.

Once the raven had completely changed its form, a man stood in its place. He was a rather tall man, with dark brown hair that reached down to his chin. One of his eyes were a deep forest green, while the other was a shade of blue that bordered on gray. He looked like he was in his younger thirties, clean shaven and with a strong body build, but not fat in the least. The man was dressed all in black, from pants and jacket to shoes, cloak and a Fedora hat.

He walked the few remaining steppes up to the front door and gently picked up the bundle the tiny boy was wrapped in, and stuffed the letter in his pocket. After making sure he had not awakened the sleeping boy, he turned around and began to walk down the street towards the nearby park, going the opposite direction to were Dumbledore had arrived from. Once he arrived at the park, he stooped and looked around, carefully making sure no one was watching him. Then he reaches into another of his pockets and pulled out what looks like a small flat stone, with several strange symbols on it. He reached out his arm, with his hand palm up, and mumble some strange words in a odd language for nearly half a minute. After a few seconds, the symbol on the stone began to glow, and when the man finishes his mumbling he removes his hand, but the stone stays in the air where it recently lay in his hand.

A moment later the stone disintegrated into a fine powder, that began to glow a soft blue, and forms into an oval shape, approximately six feet tall and three feet wide. When the center of the shape dulled slightly once the dust had taken shape, it revealed what looks like the front of a fairly large house. The man took one more look around to make sure that still no one was watching. Then he looked down at the boy in his arms, and as a smile started to spread across his face, he stepped through the portal. Once the man was gone from Little Whinging, Surrey the portal winked out, and the dust that once made up the portalstone was soon swept away in the late Autumn wind.

* * *

In the yard outside a fairly large, modest looking house, a small blue light winked into existence. And a moment later it whirled and expanded into an oval shaped portal, with its center shoving a park in some suburban area. Once the portal was fully formed, a man stepped through with a small bundle in his arms, and as soon as he was through, the portal faded away. The man looked up at the house with a smile: the lights were on in one of the rooms on the bottom floor, meaning his dear wife was awake. He walked up to his home, and quietly opened the door, trying not to disturb anyone sleeping.

"Nick? Is that you dear?" his wife's voice could be heard from the living room. Guess every resident was awake after all.

"Yes, Honey." He replied as he took of his shoes.

He walked into the living room and found his wife sitting on the couch cross-legged, she was a beautiful woman looking to be in her mid- to late twenties, with light brown hair that had honey blond streaks through out, reaching down to her ankles when not tied up. Her eyes were colored the same light brown as her hair, and she was currently dressed in a long white sleeveless nightgown.

Beside her were a small bundle, much like the one he had in his arms. His wife looked up from their child to face her husband, she looked very tired but had a smile on her face once she looked in his eyes.

"What do you have there?" she asked once she saw him carrying the bundle.

"Someone that is in need of a better home than were he was a few minutes ago."

"And you felt you had to go get him... her?... in the middle of the night?"

"Him. And once you take a look at him, maybe you will recognize whose son this is?" he asked as he sat down on the other side of his wife than where his daughter was sleeping. He carefully gave the young boy to his wife, who held the boy in one arm and stroked the baby's face absently. After a moment of thought she tilted her head.

"No, I don't recognize who's baby this could be." she said quietly.

"You know the Potters, I presume?"

His wife snapt her head to her husband. "You kidnapped James' son?" she hissed, barely raising her voice so as to not waking their daughter.

Nick looked into her eyes with a sad expression. "No. They are dead, young Harry here was left on the doorsteps to a muggle family, who accordingly to the lady who had observed the muggle family the last day, were not suited to raise him."

Now it was his wife's turn to get a sad expression. "I take it Voldemort found them after all."

Nick didn't respond to that, just nodded. "You might want to know that it was Dumbledore who left Harry at the muggles."

His wife's expression turned into shocked surprise at the mention of Dumbledore, but it turned to an angry scowl once he finished. "And as always, he has to involve himself in everything regardless of whether its his business or not."

At that moment, her hand was stroking Harry's forehead, more specifically her finger touched the scar on his forehead. She janked her hand away with a gasp as if she had been burned.

"What?" her husband asked worryingly "What is it?"

His wife just stared at the scar on Harry's head.

"Camilla." he said more forcefully. This seemed to snap her out of whatever had happened.

"There is a Soul Fragment in his head." she said. Her eyes were wide open, and she looked a little pale.

"A Soul Shard you mean?"

"No, a Fragment. Its not a complete Shard, but..." she gently touched the scar again, and winced a little once she touched it. "... it seems like it was used to create a Soul Stone. I think you would call it a Horcrux, if memory serves."

Now it was Nick's turn to stare with wide open eyes and pale face. "Voldemort?"

Camilla bit her lip. "I never fought him personally, so I can't tell if its him or not. But if I were to guess, then... sadly yes. I'd say it's Voldemort's Horcrux."

"So he is still alive then?"

"Again, it was a long time ago I read about Horcruxes, but if they work the same way as an Soul Stone... which I must assume they do, given how this one feels... then if Voldemort were to die while anchored by a Horcrux, then he would not truly die for as long as they are active."

"This one? He has more than one? How Many?"

"I can only tell that this one is not one hundred percent completed, its kind of like he was in a hurry making this one, but it fulfills it's purpose. That tells me that he knew how to create a Horcrux before this one, so at least two besides this one, maybe more than that."

"More than three? I though you could only have one at a time?"

"That's one more difference between a Soul Stone and a Horcrux: Soul Stone is an anchor to your soul made purely by magic, and the amount of magic required to anchor a soul without a piece of your soul as a catalyst is ridiculous, thus you can only have one Soul Stone at a time. A Horcrux on the other hand uses a piece of the soul being anchored as a catalyst to keep your soul in the mortal realm, because of that, the magical requirement is drastically reduced... at a price."

"Which is?"

"For every active Horcrux, you loose a piece of yourself; you sanity, your humanity."

"And that explains why Voldemort has done some of the things hes done, I guess"

"Perhaps..." Camilla whispered. She looked back down on Harry, stroking his cheeks.

"Can it be removed?" Nick asked after a full minute of silence.

"Yes. Though it will most likely take some time, given it looks like it was made in a hurry." She looked at their daughter, then called out "Irja."

There was a small pop and their House Elf, Irja, stood in the living room across from the small table that was in front of the couch. But she was not of the "Common House Elf" variety, instead she looked more like muggle fairy tail Elves; humans with pointed elongated ears that was a foot long. In truth, she was the "Original House Elf" variety; long ago when wizard-kind first came across Elves and the mutual benefits of binding Elves to wizards and witches was discovered, it quickly became a trend to have a House Elf. Problem was that there was far to few Elves to bind with every wizard and witch that wanted an House Elf, so their species became hard pressed to breed much to fast to accommodate all wizard-kind. This lead to the "Common House Elf" variety, and though they now numbered high enough for every wizard that wanted a House Elf to have one, the Elves became to interbreed to keep their beauty, and they lost a fair portion of their power too.

Irja was six foot tall with light skin and blond hair, that was almost white. She was dressed in a gray full length skirt and a top of the same color that ended just below her ribs, showing her stomach. She was also wearing several elaborate earrings in each ear made of gold and silver, a plain golden ring on each finger, and several silver bracelets on each wrist.

"You called, Mistress?" Irja asked. But the pop had startled their daughter, and she now started crying, which in turn awoken Harry and causing him to start crying also. Irja winced once she realized she was the cause for the children crying. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to awaken Young Mistress."

"No matter, can you remove the Soul Fragment thats lodged in Harry's Head?" Camilla asked holding out Harry so Irja could take him. Then she lifted her daughter to soothe her.

Once she held Harry comfortably in her arms close to her chest, she began stroking Harry's face like Camilla had done earlier while humming softly. This caused Harry to quickly calm down, and once he was no longer crying, Irja gently touched the lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead. She held her index finger on the scar for a moment, then she got a smile on her face.

"What's the verdict?" Nick asked Irja curiously as to why she was smiling, she honestly didn't smile all that often, as far as he could remember.

Irja didn't move, and continued to smile for a short moment before she resumed stroking Harry's face and turned to answer her Master. "If I bind with him, the binding ritual will cleanse him of all impurities, Master."

"But he is not of Azera'n blood. You cant bind with anyone outside of their bloodline." Nick said confused.

"Indeed, Master." she said timidly, looking at Camilla, who now looked very surprised.

"You want to bring him into my Bloodline?" Camilla asked after the initial surprise passed.

"Mistress need a Heir to her Bloodline, I need a proper Bond Master, and Young Mistress Jessica will need a sibling to grow up alongside. Young Harry's parents have passed away, his Guardians are Unavailable, and the Caretakers whom he was left at are Unfit to care for any Child. If You take in Young Harry everyone wins."

Irja had a smile on her face during her entire explanation, for two reasons: the first was that it would ensure the continuation of the Azera'n Bloodline. Jessica was of the forth generation where only a single female had been born, if no male Heir was found the Azera'n Bloodline would go extinct, and an emergency solution like the one Camilla had taken could not be taken again (marrying while keeping her maiden name). The second reason was similar, but more personal for Irja: because young Jessica was a forth generation of only females (meaning Camilla was from a third generation of only females) Irja had not been able to Bond with any Azera'n Head of House, she had only had a Minor Bond with Camilla, her mother, and her grandmother ever since the last Head of House passed away almost eighty years ago. And if she did not Bond soon she would die.

After a moment of consideration Nick cleared his throat. "Well, this is quite far from what I expected when I brought Harry home with me."

"Maybe so, but I've learned long ago to trust your gut... in more than one sense." she then added as an afterthought.

"Harr, Harr." was Nick's dry response.

"So we go through with the ritual? He will be the Heir of at least five Houses, more depending on if he inherits any other titles from his birth-parents than just Potter." his wife pointed out. "Though I guess that is a moot point, its this or my Bloodline will perish."

Hearing this Irja made a small squeal of happiness.

"We should check to make sure Old Dumbledore doesn't have any schemes hiding in the shadows first though. Having the Supreme Mugwump personally drop of a child at the doorsteps of muggles smells fishy to me." Nick said.

"So we are in agreement? We take Harry in?" Camilla confirmed.

Nick threw a look at Irja, who was hopefully beaming with joy. "As long as we move carefully about it, the answer is: Yes. Most definitely."

This was exactly the answer Irja wanted, and she began to dance around the living-room all the while singing quietly in the Old Elven Tongue. Nick hugged his wife and placed a hand on Jessica's head, who were looking for where the singing came from. They all had big smiles on their faces when the big grandfather clock struck midnight.

"It would seem like you just got a Brother, My Dear Child."


	2. Chapter 1 - A New Life

**Harry Potter**

**and A Different Kind of Magic**

**_A/N: While the first chapter was kind of rushed, I've taken more time to proof-read this chapter. Still, I'm not native to any English speaking country, so I might still miss some things, but it will hopefully not be as many errors as there was in the first version of the Prologue chapter.  
Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter!  
_**

**_Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTING!_**

* * *

_Chapter 1 – A new Life_

Harry ran as fast through the forest as he could, trying to ignore the angry screams behind him. Something made a swishing sound and then there was an explosion of what sounded like wood, probably a tree he just passed. Not wanting to risk a clear shot, nor run the risk of being identified (though his assailant most likely knew who he was anyway), he turned to run more toward the north. He didn't get far before he saw his partner in crime running along side him to his right.

His sister Jessica had grown into a fine young lady, who was just beginning to take her first steppes into womanhood, their mother had begun to develop early too, so their parents had expected it. She was roughly two inches taller than Harry, with light brown hair that had honey blond streaks through out, just like her mother, and similar to Harry himself (but he had a much darker brown with light brown streaks). Both their hair reached to their lover back, Harry wore his hair in a simple pony-tail, while Jessica wore hers high in an big elaborate sort of knot that then cascade down her back (if she didn't, her hair would reach well below her knees), tied into the knot was several silk shawls in forest green and deep blue, that followed her hair down to her lower back.

"Better hurry up or he'll catch you." he panted as he ran.

"You try running in a frilly dress!" she shot back.

"We wouldn't be running if you had just sticked to the plan."

"It would not have gotten his attention and we both know it."

"So you thought you would throw a Ro'thar Nest at him?" Harry laughed

"Well it worked didn't it?" Jessica laughed back.

Just then a spell shot past between them, and impacted a stone a few yards in front of them, there it impacted and pulverized stone flew high in the air, leaving a small crater. Harry and Jessica threw a quick glance at each other.

"Less talking..." Harry began.

"...more running." Jessica finished.

Agreeing, they picked up their pace, heading for their "Adventuring Nexus".

* * *

"You think... we lost... him?" Jessica panted, holding her side and leaning on one of the stone columns, her dark blue dress moving slightly in the breeze.

Their "Adventuring Nexus" was a Stonehenge-looking ruin in the forest behind their home, fifty feet in diameter stood seven pair of nine foot tall stones, seven feet between each pair, and had a thirteen foot wide stone on top. Between the ring of stones and the forest was a thirteen foot clearing, and inside the circle was a floor made from one by one foot, squared of, stone bricks.

"Umm... Let me... check." Harry panted sarcastically in response, touching his rear. "Yep... no pig-... tail... we lost him."

Jessica gave him an 'are-you-stupid' look, but didn't say anything. After a few minutes, when they had both caught their breath enough to actually speak, she asked "So... What color do you think he will be when we get home?"

"No idea. He's just as likely to glow... I don't know... Pink, as any other color."

"True."

"So... we should probably head home now. I don't think Oscar are too mad at us anymore."

"No hurry, though. The longer it take us to get home, the calmer he will be."

"Yeah." Harry said weakly as he stood up. "Let's grab our loot and then we'll crawl home."

"Sure." Jessica replied, standing up and walking over to one of the pillars Harry was now kneeling in front of. Together they lifted one of the stones that made up the "floor" inside the circle, and beneath it was a small empty space, where they sometimes hid their loot before heading home, after their exploration expeditions of the ruin complex up in the mountains behind their home.

This was yesterdays haul, and it was not one of their best; a handful of coins, the handle of a broken and rusty old sword, a one half inch gemstone and some broken equipment that was most likely used in astronomy many, many years ago. But they didn't bring home arm-fulls of junk to get rich. No, they explored the ruins simply because they enjoyed mapping out the old complex, both above ground and beneath it. There was the occasional thrill when they accidentally would spring some decayed old trap; the traps would mostly just make a lot of noise, giving the kids a heart attack. Other times the thrill came from finding the odd coin, or a book written in some really old and forgotten language that had not yet utterly withered away, or other bits and pieces left behind by the previous inhabitants. Once they even found a room full of clay urns, containing food, and some of it was still edible after however many years they've been in store.

Jessica stuffed the coins and the gemstone in the pockets of her skirt, then took the old instrument, that had the shape of half a sphere, while Harry took the hilt. Now that they were not in the darkness of the underground tunnels they could see there were something inscribed on the hilt, but it needed to be cleaned before they could make out what it said. Replacing the cover stone they headed home, but didn't want to risk running in to Oscar just yet, so they took their time to enjoy their surroundings.

As they walked into a clearing that sloped down towards a nearby river, they could see the river snaking its way towards the lake northwest of their home. And to the north of the lake was the mountains that was home to the ruins they quite frequently went to, in an attempt to map it out. Since they began their adventurers to the ruins, they estimated they had roughly mapped out one tenth of the overall layout of the surface ruins, but who knew how much of the complex could be found underground? And though they had a rough map of, what they believed was one tenth, of the surface ruins (by climbing some of the taller, still standing structures) they had only explored a handful of building remnants up close.

Suddenly they heard a sound, and Jessica grabbed Harry's arm to stop him as she caught her breath. There, on the other side of the clearing, not fifty feet away from them, stood a pure golden unicorn foal and its mother, watching them silently. Unicorn and human just stood there watching each other for a moment, before the unicorns trotted away, leaving an awestruck Jessica.

"A unicorn foal!" she squealed in gleeful happiness, once they were out of sight.

"What are unicorns doing this far west? " Harry wondered out loud, puzzled.

"Does it matter?"

"I was thinking of our old lazy-bum friend. Wont he try to eat the unicorns if they travel this far west?"

"You do know that we would be on the menu, too, if he did hunt all the way over here?"

"Um... yea... I just thought... um... never mind." he stammered, causing Jessica to playfully whack his shoulder. "Hey!"

"Use the thing between your ears, bro." she said with a smile as she began to walk again. "You would think we are not related, otherwise."

"_You_ know that we aren't." he shot back, once he gathered himself to reply, still rubbing his arm, and still wondering why there were unicorns in these forests.

* * *

Once they made it home it was already dinner time, their house was built in a large clearing on top of a hill, the back porch (which took up the entire backside of the house, as the hill then steeply dropped of after the porch, though it was not quite a cliff side, the hill was steep.) was overlooking the forest bellow, and had the same view like the one they had seen earlier, while the front yard was located in a gentle slope, with sections flattened to form what looked like giant steppes (kind of like rice fields), the vertical part of the "steppes" were two feet tall cobblestone walls. Their garden held many kinds of trees and berry bushes, and one plot of farmland for some vegetables and the like, and one slightly larger plot with potatoes.

The house itself was square and two stories tall and kind of looked like half a cube with windows and a roof, nothing fancy. It was an old lumber house with a stone foundation, a light gray stone chimney and black tuckers roof tiles, but it was still in good condition. Of to the west side of the House was a greenhouse, with their mothers magical plants that she used for her alchemy job, so it was of limits unless they were supervised. Jessica was the curious and mischievous one of the two (most of the time), so one time when she was nine she had tried to sneak in when their mother was away on one of her business trips. She never tried again, and from what Harry had seen of his sister that day, he didn't want to try either. Tickle torture he could go without.

Their friends; Alex, John and Max, was currently sitting on the cobblestone wall closest to the house with a board hovering in front of them, playing a Exploding Snap. Once Jessica caught sight of them she elbowed Harry, holding her index finger over her mouth and had a mischievous smile. Harry just raised one eyebrow, looking between her and their friends. This was apparently one of her more mischievous days; given that it was her idea to play Balloon War in the forest, which had lead to their less than friendly run-in with Oscar, Max's older brother, resulting in him having a Ro'thar Nest thrown at the back of his head. He had most likely been out to gather all the kids, so that they would be home for dinner.

Jessica shoved the broken astronomy device into his arms, and slowly began stalking towards their friends. Harry silently watched her sneak closer, and once she was halfway he got a mischievous grin on his own face, and quietly jogged up behind her. Jessica was standing right behind their friends when he caught up with her, and as she was silently inhaling he screamed "ARGH!"

This had a rather funny effect; Harry had screamed right as Jessica was about to scream herself, causing her to yelp out in fear at the top of her lungs. Their combined scream was heard at the same time as on of the cards exploded, further frightening their friends, Alex, whom was siting to the left of the game-board, gave a small yelp as she threw her cards in the air, accidentally jumping of the cobblestone wall, and landing bottom first on the ground with a mixture of fear and surprise on her face. Max, whom was siting to the right of the game-board, remained on the wall, but spun around so quickly that a tearing sound could be heard from where he sat, and at the same time bringing his left leg up to his chest and hurl his arms up in some karate-looking stance.

John, whom had been sitting in the middle, had no where to go but forward... so that's where he went; he tried to dive over the game-board, but unfortunately this caused a short series of explosions to occur as he had landed belly down on the ground with the board, and most of the cards with it, underneath him, causing him to hop like a fish on land whilst trying to escape the exploding cards.

When the last card exploded and it got quiet, all five of them was staring at each other with wide open eyes; the scare had been a little more effective than anticipated. But the silence only lasted a mere moment, before they all descended into full blown, throw your head back, hold your side, belly laughs, and they were all soon rolling in the grass. Max rolled of the wall in his out of control laughter, landing in the ground two feet down with an audible "Uhff!".

This caused a pause and then even more laughter, especially to Harry and Jessica; as they crawled to the edge of the wall their vantage point gave them a view of Max's now torn pants (thankfully his skivvies were still whole). While they were rolling around in the grass, laughing their heads off, Nick had come out to see what all the commotion was all about. He now stood with raised eyebrows and had a bemused expression on his face, looking from one kid to the next.

It was several minutes before they calmed down enough for Nick to speak. "So... Does anyone want to tell me that's so funny?"

The kids had to spend another couple of minutes trying to explain between fits of giggles, and Nick just stood there, waiting for the kids to get it out of their system before speaking again.

"Okay then. If you youths are quite finished, we can go have dinner now. John, how is your stomach? Max, turn around, let me fix your pants before your mother sees you shoving of your skivvies."

"I'm a little sore if I'm being honest, Sir" responded John.

"My stomach hurts, Nick" winced Alex, trying, and failing to pout.

"I'll ask Camilla to get you two some minor pain relive potions." said Nick

"Mum is back?" asked Max, wiping away a tear.

"You mum and Camilla went to the local market, not to London. They have been back since lunch."

"Buying presents?" asked Jessica.

"I wouldn't know, now would I? I didn't join the ladies on their shopping frenzy." Nick replied with a grin.

"Don't let mum hear you say that, dad. Or she might invite aunt Rose over for tea." warned Harry.

Jessica shivered dramatically "Uh-hu-hu... not aunt Rose. She'll always have us eat those sugar laced citrus-cakes. Yack!"

"Don't say things like that about your aunt behind her back. Besides, I happen to like those cakes of hers." their father replied with a smirk that promised sugar laced citrus-cakes in the near future. "Actually, don't speak like that about you're aunt, Period."

"That does not sound very good." Alex commented.

"I think it does, maybe I could ask for some, that way my sweet-tooth of a sister might just leave my candy stash alone." John said giving a sideway glance at his sister with a grin, to which Alex just stuck her tongue out at him.

"Sure, kid. I'll ask aunt Rose if she can make an extra helping of those lovely cakes she bakes. But now we relay need to head in to dinner, before my wife starts yelling at us." said Nick as he started to herd the kids up towards the house.

* * *

Once they entered the house and was standing in the lobby, there was two arched entrances, one immediately to the left that lead to a combined library and study, and beyond that, once you stepped into the library there were two guest rooms to the right. And through the arch to the right from the entrance was leading to the living room where there was a fireplace along the wall bordering to the hallway (not big enough for Floo travel). Straight in from the front door was a short corridor with stairs along the left wall leading to the upper floor, and coming from the other end of the corridor was the stairs leading to the cellar beneath the stairs going up. Beyond the stairs to the left were two bathrooms, one for family and one for quest (or one for boys and one for girls, if the need arouse). And beyond the stairs to the right was the kitchen, and beyond the kitchen, in the corner of the house were the dining room, which also connected to the living room, the dining room also had the door to the back porch.

Harry put the hilt and the astronomy device beside the door, while Jessica went downstairs to their mothers alchemy room to get the pain relieve potions for John and Alex, while the rest of the party went into the dining room, where Harry's mother was siting and chatting animately with Max and Oscars parents.

"Dad, wheres Oscar?" Max asked his father a heart beat before Harry could.

"He's in the shower. Whatever you did to him apparently refuses to come off, what did you do to the poor boy?" Max father, a tall, muscular and bald man, responded.

"Me? I didn't do anything to him, he and Jessica did." Max said pointing at Harry.

"Umm... yeah, about that..." said Harry meekly, but didn't get any further, because he was interrupted by laughter coming from beyond the kitchen.

Oscar had exited the bathroom just as Jessica had ascended from the cellar with the potions, and he was the reason for her current amusement. He walked through the kitchen and stood at the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room, only wearing his boxers, and had a thoroughly pissed of looking expression on his face.

"Does anyone care to tell me how to get rid of this?" he asked angrily, pointing at his face.

It was quite hilarious for Alex, John and especially Max (who no doubt would tease his brother mercilessly for the show later on) as this was their first time seeing him in this state. Harry and Jessica laughed their heads of too, even though they knew of Oscars predicament beforehand, having accidentally caused it (OK, true... Jessica knowingly caused this to happen, they just had not originally targeted Oscar), but partially for seeing it none the less and partially from hearing their friends laughter it was still funny. Even their parents couldn't quite hide their amused smiles.

Oscars face was covered in what looked like large mosquito bites, each glowing, and blinking, rather brightly in various colors, the intensity of the glow growing and decreasing randomly. Even the color changed sporadicly. However, their laugher only made Oscar more angry at them all, causing his face to shift to a deep red, and the Ro'thar bites to glow bright pink. This resulted in more laugher, which in turn caused Oscar to get more angry, and that in turn resulted in the colors to rapidly flash between bright pink, green and indigo blue, which just made things worse.

Eventually though, they calmed down enough for Nick to speak.

"Here, I'll get you some sa'e-sap to put on the bite marks." he said as he walked into the kitchen and pulled out a small glass jar. "Put on a decent amount on each bite, leave it for about ten minutes, and them wash it of with as cold water you can bear."

Oscar took the jar, and as he left the kitchen he sent a glare to Jessica before heading back into the shower. Once he was gone, and the door to the bathroom locked, John and Alex downed their potions, while Camilla turned to her children with a stern look.

"I presume there is absolutely no reason why I should suspect the two of you?" she asked with narrow eyes.

"Well, no. But first of we didn't intend for him to be the one to fa... um, to be hit." said Jessica

"I'm sure you didn't." said Camilla sarcastically.

"Secondly; at first, the plan did not involve any Ro'thars, just some... er... itching bombs." finished Harry, before quickly adding "Jessie just got tired of waiting for our en.. um, our target, to get close to the trap."

At their mothers now angry look Jessica quickly added "We were playing Balloon Wars."

After a moment of staring at her children, she finally let out a sigh.

"Be grateful tomorrow is your birthday, or you would not get of so easily." she said with a pointed finger at the two of them.

"Sorry." they both said in unison, looking down at the floor in just a little bit of shame.

"Good. But don't think you're not getting reprimanded later for this." Camilla said after a few seconds, in a finishing tone, that caused both of them to wince, knowing how that would end.

"Well, not that thats over, perhaps we should start dinner. I believe that Oscar still does not like bean soup?." Nick asked Oscars mother.

"No, he most certainly does not. I'm still having trouble to getting him to eat beans in any way, shape or form." Oscar's and Max's Mother, a short, blond woman, said.

"Well then. Irja, we are ready for dinner now, please." Nick said.

And with that they started the first dish of tonight's dinner, talking about inconsequential things from the how the children though school would be, to Harry's and Jessica's joint birthday the next day and about Harry and Jessica seeing the unicorn, to which Alex pouted, saying she wanted to see a unicorn too. Shortly before they finished with the soup, Oscar came out of the bathroom non-glowing, but still a bit sulky. But once they moved on to the next dish, which was broccoli pie, the glutton in Oscar awoke and the incident was mostly forgotten (though how he could hate beans with a passion, yet love broccoli with an even deeper passion was a major mystery for everyone at the table.), or at least forgotten for the time being.

After their customary pre-birthday dinner party with their closest friends, the adults slowly made their way into the living room to chat about whatever adults talked about for hours on end (none of the kids could figure out what could keep them so occupied for so long some times.), drinking various alcohol beverages, while the kids themselves went into the library to play some muggle games that Alex and John had brought, as they were muggleborn, and thus had quite a few such games, drinking various sorts of soda.

Once it got quite late, their parents began to herd their kids into the second guest room, so they would go to sleep. After Harry hurried up to his and Jessica's shared bedroom to drop of the hilt and the weird device, and once the kids were in fact in their beds in the guest room (though not quite yet sleeping), the parents themselves went to bed, Max's and Oscar's parents into the other guest room, and Harry's and Jessica's went upstairs to their master bedroom.

The kids slowly went of to sleep, chatting away about their big day tomorrow. After all, it isn't everyday a kid turns eleven.


	3. Chapter 2 - Birthday

**Harry Potter**

**and A Different Kind of Magic**

**_A/N: Hurray! I feel like this story is progressing nicely, maybe one or two more Chapters before it's of to Hogwarts.  
_**

**_Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTING!_**

* * *

_Chapter 2 – Birthday_

Harry awoke to birds singing in the trees outside the slightly ajar window, that they had opened before going to bed, as the nights were quite warm. The window was facing East, so luckily there was no annoying sunlight hitting him in the face, as it was quite early; the clock above the door showed it was just before six in the morning. However, what was quite annoying, was his sister poking him in the back every now and again, trying to wake him up.

Giving a quiet, and sleepy groan, he scooted away from the annoyance, but a few seconds later the poking continued. In his attempt to get away from the poking, he bumped into John, only for him to groan in annoyance and attempt to shove Harry away, which resulted in John more or less punch Harry in the stomach. Harry exclaimed a loud "Huff!", which awoke everyone in the room, save Max, whom could sleep through thunderstorms.

Now everyone awake looked around with sleep ridden eyes, and to the sound of Jessica giggling, trying to figure out what had awoken them.

"Thanks a lot, mate." Harry whined, with what little air he had left in his lungs after being punched, with his arms over his stomach and legs up in a fetal position.

"I tried to wake you, you should have gotten up then." Jessica continued to giggle.

Harry just waved hid arm in a 'what ever' motion, while making whining sounds.

Once the kids had all awoken, and after a quick battle between the boys over who should get to use the bathroom first, they made their way into the kitchen where the adults, now joined by John's and Alex's parents, greeted them.

"Mum, Dad!" Alex ran to her mother, while John to his father to embrace in bear hugs.

"I though you could not come." Alex half asked her parent.

"Our shift ended at midnight, so we've been here since one in the morning." their father answered.

"You didn't sleep?" Oscar asked, rubbing the last of the sleep out of his eyes.

"We took a power-nap in the living room, got a few hours. Not much going on at the clinic during the night." Alex mother responded with a yawn, that she tried to cover with the back of her hand, only somewhat successfully.

Once all three families was seated they had a nice breakfast, with the kids relaying to John's and Alex's parents what they had done the day before, the parents themselves alternated between listening to their story and reading the newspaper (either the magical _the Daily Prophet_ or the non-magical _Metro_ (John and Alex was muggleborn)) and Irja was in the kitchen humming the melody of some long forgotten elven song.

Once they were done eating, Jessica could no longer sit still, much to the amusement of the adults, so they moved to the living room to open present. Harry and Jessica both got heavy, brown leather boots and a beige Scouts Hat from John, they were muggle-made, but had (with the help of Oscar and Oscar's parents) lined them with some basic runes to make the boots stay dry and warm, and the hats to not accidentally fall of.

Alex gave them a compass, that she had found when she accompanied John for his latest shopping trip in Diagon Alley for his school supplies, the compass was charmed to always point to the closest way out of a building, rather than to point north. She had wanted to buy them one present each, but explained that she could not afford two presents, as the compass was rather expensive (for a nine year old). But Jessica explained to her that she and Harry just shared everything they got anyway, save clothes or gender-specific items.

From John's and Alex's parents they got a box of various muggle candy, and from Oscar's and Max's parents a box of various magical candy.

Oscar gave them a collection of plastic fishes, that he had found when he and John had explored muggle-London, and was charmed to "swim" around in the air in the room, and plastic kelp, charmed to sway, and generally appear to be living, allowing you to create a "dry-aquarium" in your room.

And Max gave them each a quill, that could write in any color, regardless of the color of the ink. As well as a small bundle of enchanted parchment, that could erase what you had written (sadly, it was all or nothing) or make the writing permanent, on command.

Their father gave them each a water and potion proof watch, Harry's in a heavy, masculine design; made from silver, with a dark purplish-grey background and cream white hands that had a small emerald on the tip of each hand and digits of the same white color, and a black leather band with silver fastener. While Jessica's was smaller with a more feminine design; silver, with a snow white background, black digits and hands that each had a small sapphire in place of Harry's emerald, and a snow white leather band with silver fastener.

Their mothers present was a matching pair of helix cuff earrings (after a quick magical and painless piercing, Harry chose to wear his on his right ear, while Jessica chose to wear it on her left ear), they were half an inch in length, and were made out of gold. They were also charmed to keep their hair cleaner longer (and Camilla preached for several minutes that they were not meant to replace showers, and Harry and Jessica replying that that was just disgusting), and made their hair easier to brush as well, but didn't completely prevent knots.

And from Irja they each got a mithril bracelet, enchanted to prevent them from getting writer's cramp, or accidentally loosing their grip on either their quill or their wand (due to loss of sleep or charms), and they matched well with their watch (Watch on their left wrist, Bracelet on their right).

Jessica got a black, under-bust corset from Harry, one that she had stood and drooled over last time they went to by clothes. It had ornate silver fasteners in front, and the cloth itself had an intricate pattern, but it's design was not what had caught her eye; it was the excessive amounts of hidden pockets it had (her skirts had more pockets than a multi-compartment trunk, so Harry didn't see the need for more pockets, but Hey! If that's what she wanted, then presents was easy that year).

Harry didn't get anything from Jessica, other than a promise that she had bought him a present, they just needed to go pick it up next time they went shopping in Diagon Alley. Harry shrugged, he usually got plenty of presents anyway, so he wasn't overly bothered by it. As long as she kept her promise.

Once their presents were opened, the kids went out to play various games, ranging from tag to charades, until they were called in for a late lunch. As they were starting to sit down, an owl flew in through the open kitchen window, and landed on the counter. Oscar, who were walking into the kitchen from the bathroom when the owl arrived, took the liberty of untying the letters, and read who the receiver was.

"Hey, Jessica, seems like the two of you got into Hogwarts, congratulations. Here's your letter Harry." he said as he gave the letters to them. The news was followed by congratulations from everyone present, but one seemed distracted.

Irja, who was currently putting out food on the table, eyed Harry's letter for a second, then she turned to Camilla.

"Um... Mistress? Can I talk to You for a moment?" she asked quietly.

"Sure." Camilla said, and stood up from the table to follow Irja into the library. "What's the matter?" she asked when they stood in the corner furthest from the archway.

"Master has received a letter from Hogwarts, under the name 'Potter', as well. I was wondering if I should give Him that letter tonight with the rest, or what do You want to do, Mistress?"

Camilla thought for a moment before she answered "Take a look at the two letters as soon as you can, if they are identical, except for the name, then burn the one addressed to Potter."

"As You wish, Mistress." Irja replied with a nod.

They returned to the dining room, and once they were all seated and had started eating, Irja inconspicuously took both Jessica's and Harry's Hogwarts letters and disappeared through the kitchen. A few minutes later she returned, and Camilla caught her eye, to which Irja shook her head, so Camilla returned her attention to the current conversation at the table.

Once lunch was over and done with, both the kids and their parents went to the living room to play some muggle card games for a few hours. When the clock struck six, the visiting parents told their kids to pack their sleepwear, and whatever they had brought to stay the night. It took over an hour, but once all kids had their stuff packed and ready to leave, and the parents had said their goodbyes, they were lead out the house and down the gravel path leading to a fifteen wide, ten feet tall fireplace; this was the only way for guests to enter their premise.

Once the last of them had Flooed away, Jessica sighed.

"Where they really that bothersome?" asked Nick with a little amusement.

"No, of course not. Just wish they could go to Hogwarts too, you know."

"Yeah, I know the feeling. It's sad that Hogwarts is an Invitation-Only-School; you're bound to leave some friends behind, but you're also bound to meet new friends. But Hey, you can always stay in touch with them through Owls."

"Did you go to Hogwarts, Dad?" Harry asked.

"I did." he responded with a nod. "I was in Ravenclaw, I was one year senior to you birth-father, you know. Did one or two pranks with them." he said, putting a hand on the back of Harry's shoulder, with a nostalgic smile on his face.

"You wanna open your fan-mail now?" questioned excitedly after a moment of silence.

Harry just chuckled. "Sure."

They made their way back up to the house and sat down in the living room once more, and Irja began to bring in several stacks of letters and packages. All five of them spent the rest of the night opening presents addressed to The-Boy-Who-Lived, reading through letters from fans, young and old, and admiring the drawings of those who were to young to write themselves. When they were done, they had filled a whole hard cover folder with drawings and letters (Thank you letters would be written tomorrow), a fairly large box with homemade presents and trinkets, and Irja reported that there were also a smaller box with edibles ranging from homemade cookies to bought chocolate frogs (He had the whole collection of chocolate frog card by now, and he had never bought a chocolate frog in his life, neither had his family), and what money had been gifted was seized by Nick to be deposited at Gringotts the next time they went there.

It was a happy and satisfied Harry that went to bed that nigh; his and Jessica's birthday was everything they could have wished for, and tomorrow (probably after several hours of writing thank you letters) was the day he and his sister had waited almost seven years for; they would get their wand.

* * *

The following morning was pretty much like Harry imagined it would be; hours upon hours of writing. At least Irja basked in the compliments for her present. By the time all letters was written, and Irja poped away to the nearest post office to send them all, it was lunchtime, and all throughout lunch Jessica could barely sit still.

"Dad, can we begin make our wands now, pretty please?" she asked every five seconds, until Camilla had to threatened to confiscate any and all wands she would get her hands on until she was of age. That got her quiet, or at lest for the duration of the meal.

"Dad?" she asked timidly once they were all full, and Irja had begun removing the plates from the table.

Nick laughed at the eagerness of his daughter. "Yeah, Jessie. We can begin now."

A high pitched squeal was Jessica's only response, as she clapped her hands in excitement. Camilla just smiled and rolled her eyes.

"I'll be in the greenhouse, if you need me." Camilla said. "Have fun kids."

Once his wife had exited the room, Nick began quiz the kids on what was necessary to know before, and during, wand making. Nick worked part-time as a wand maker, so he would be the one to actually make the wands, but the kids would be the ones to select the materials used in the creation of them, and would give a helping hand whenever possible.

When the quiz was done (truly, it wasn't all that much theory to be know concerning wand making, but Nick made sure that the kids would know what they were doing) he brought them down to his work room in the basement, pulled out an assortment of sticks and showed the kids how to channel their magic through the wood, to see which one fought their magic the least. The process took close to an hour, and in the end Jessica ended up with Ash-wood, while Harry found that Japanese Cedar gave the least resistance.

When they had identified the wood to be used in their wand, Nick showed them to the shelves that covered one entire wall of the room, which was filled to the brim with magical items used to make magical cores. This step took quite a bit longer than finding the correct wood-type. Jessica found some orange colored, crystal-looking hair, that seemed to be hot enough to distort the air around it. While Harry found that a feather of purest white, and that glowed softly, was calling to him.

When they asked what they had chosen, Nick answered that he wasn't surprised by Jessica's choice; the orange 'hair' was a piece of the fire-crystal of a living dragon, and that the dragon it was taken from was their "Buddy Lazy-Bum". But Nick was the first to confess that he had no clue as to what creature had shed the glowing feather.

With the wood and the core selected, they began the delicate and tedious process of shaping the wood into a wand, and later infusing the cores into the wand. When those steps was completed, only the rune-work remained to make a functional wand. But Nick would usually line the handle of the wands he made with some magical cloth; it made the wand feel better in the users hand, it made the flow of magic from the user to the wand smother, which meant you could use magic a bit longer compared to without, and it made the wand just a tiny bit more efficient, making the spells that tiny bit more potent.

But the magical cloth that Nick had in mind for his kids was night impossible to buy, even in shady places like Knockturn Alley, and creating it was a long and rather unstable process; Ichorcloth was basically over-infused Runecloth, but the risk was worth it, for if applied as lining on a wand it made the wand down right useless to anyone but it's intended user (if the wand was custom made, which his kids' was).

So Nick would inscribe the runes onto the wands, while Camilla would create the Ichorcloth, the wands should still be ready in time for Hogwarts. And just before bedtime, their wands was ready for use, though they would need to line them with the Ichorcloth once that was made, so it was an excited couple of kids that went to bed that night.

* * *

The next day was a Friday, and although their parents had excused them from home-schooling work, they chose to spend most of the day trying to decipher the runes they found on the broken sword hilt they had found a few days ago, but after nearly three hours and only a few runes translated, they gave up and just settled for memorizing and quizzing each other on rune tables.

Saturday was a day of fun and games, but Sunday morning brought a sudden end to their fun.

Jessica groaned loudly at the dining table when she saw her mother leave the kitchen with a small tray with three glasses of different colored content, Harry groaned just as load once he saw what had caused Jessica to almost flee the table.

"Do we _have_ to drink that?" Jessica asked, sitting on the edge of her chair, looking ready to bolt if the answer was not satisfactory to her.

"You're one to talk, at least yours are drinkable, and you only have three. I need to take five, and they taste like muddy-vomit!" Harry complained, dropping his head onto the table in resignation.

"This is the last time you'll need to take most of these, so don't complain and drink up." Camilla scolded.

"Keyword: Most of them" Harry and Jessica said in unison, with disgust filled voices.

"Well, you'll only _need_ to take the blue one after this. That's better than having to take all of them, isn't it?" Camilla asked.

"Yeah, sure..." Harry said, as Irja places his tray of Yucky-tasting-cocktails.

There was one glass with a light blue, see-through liquid (which honestly wasn't all that bad), an opaque, orange one that bubbled like it was boiling and one with something that was colorless but had the consistence of yogurt. In addition to those, Harry had one that was dark grey colored, with the texture and taste of mud, and one with an opaque, purple glowing liquid that tasted like vomit.

Since it was the last time they needed to take the potions, they didn't need as much coaxing to drink them (mind you, they didn't taste any better because of it, but they were not so reluctant to down the potions). They drank the colorless yogurt first, then waited fifteen minutes to down the orange one. After that Jessica had to wait another twenty minutes before drinking her last one, but Harry had to wait an hour before he could take the gray mud-drink, and five minutes later the glowing purple one, and lastly, twenty minutes after that one he downed the blue one.

"Free at last!" he shouted as he drank the last one, causing Camilla to smirk.

"You promised to tell us why we needed to drink those... Yucky... things." Jessica said looking at her mother.

"I guess I did, didn't I?" she said, as Harry and Jessica nodded she continued "The 'yogurt' one is a potion that reduces the potency of accidental magic, most parents usually places a limiter on their children's magical cores to to do the same. Problem is; the limiter somewhat reduces the cores abilities to grow, not by much, it's for the most part negligible, but using the potion instead of the limiter can give you an edge over your peers."

"Ok, I can see the pros of that one." Harry said.

"The orange potion is a cocktail of antitoxins, it removes the few negative effects of the 'potion-limiter', as well as the normal byproducts that the human body makes. It also counteract some of the more common diseases to a degree."

"Mhmm... So, that's also a good one, I suppose." Jessica said slowly. "What about the ones Harry have to take? And why don't I need to take those?"

"Mmm. That is quite the story, but here's the short one." Camilla said and turned to Harry. "When we first took you in, you had been hit by some fairly powerful Soul Magic, which left a piece of Voldemort's soul within your own. We wanted to remove it, a process that would have taken many months, but as we prepared to remove it we found out, however, that as his Soul Fragment was not intentionally put within you, it had not yet harden into anything usefully. Had we left it, and not touched it, it would have hardened into whats known as a Horcrux; it's a raw method of anchoring a persons soul in the realm of the living, but it destroys your humanity, so don't ever try it!" she said the last in a slightly raised voice, while pointing at her kids.

"After some discussion however, we decided that instead of removing it, which would more than likely have left a mark, and would have been quite painful I believe, to shape it into something useful for you instead; me and Irja spend a long time modifying a method of creating a Soul Stone, to in this case use a foreign soul as the catalyst, instead of an absurd amount of magic, which you don't posses even now, and certainly didn't posses then.

"A Soul Stone is, in effect, the same thing as a Horcrux in that it allows the person it's keyed to to survive death, with some differences; A Horcrux will keep the soul it anchors in this would even if the persons body is utterly destroyed, keeping the soul earthbound as a wraith-like entity, and will keep doing so for as long as the Horcrux is intact, but the wraith must then find a new body to inhabit. A Soul Stone on the other hand, can only keep a persons soul in this realm for a short amount of time after death, but one of it's greatest benefits is that it will reconstruct your body, even if it's reduced to nothing more than a puddle on the ground.

"Horcrux are actually a more modern version of Soul Stones, but I'll tell you more about that another time. To more directly answer your question; the gray potion you have to drink, is to weaken the Soul Fragment, but don't worry, it's targeted to only affect Voldemort's Soul Fragment and not your own soul. And the purple potion is then designed to mold the weakened Fragment into a modified Soul Stone." A smile started to slowly spread across her face before she continued.

"So You'll basically have two chances at life, BUT!" she one again put up a finger for emphasis. "That does NOT mean you can be reckless, if you are, you could very well find yourself in a situation were a single 'extra life' is not enough."

Harry gave a lob sided grin at hearing that. "Cool! Extra Life." but seeing his mothers expression, he cleared his throat and got a more serious expression himself. "Yes, Mother. In all seriousness; I am not stupid enough to put myself in a situation like that."

Camilla eyes her son suspiciously for a few seconds, for effect, before she said anything. "Good."

"Hey, what about the last potion?" Jessica asked as Camilla stood up.

"Well, that's just a vitamin-drink, kind of like the ones non-magical drink, but this one is only required once every few weeks, instead of nearly daily." she responded with a smile. "I did tell you that they weren't that bad."

"But they still taste like _Shite_!" Harry and Jessica exclaimed at the same time.

* * *

_**A/N 2: Why do potions Always taste like crap?**_


	4. Chapter 3 - The Calm Before

**Harry Potter**

**and A Different Kind of Magic**

_**A/N: No, I'm not dead. No, I've not abandoned the story. Life happened... Yadi yadi yada... Let's get on with the story, shall we?**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTHING!**_

* * *

_Chapter 3 – The calm before..._

* * *

Time passed quickly for Harry and Jessica after that, since they were five they had been home-schooled in both magical and non-magical subjects; basic runes, potion, herbology and learning about magical creatures was on the agenda for the magical part, while muggle style language lessons, mathematics, basic biology and cooking covered their non-magical schooling, and also both magical and non-magical history. Naturally, as kids, they spent a fair part of their days just behaving like the children they were; running around in the forest surrounding their home, or playing some game of either magical or muggle origin.

Two weeks after their birthday, Nick took them to Diagon Alley to pick up Harry's present from Jessica. Harry pestered Jessica the whole trip there, trying to get a hint as to what she had bought him, but she would just bash her eyelashes at him and say that "it's beautiful". When they stopped outside Eeylops Owl Emporium Harry's eyes went wide.

"You bought me an Owl?" he asked in disbelief.

"Uh-huh." Jessica nodded with a large grin on her face. "Come on, let's not keep a girl waiting."

"What Girl?" he asked bemused.

They went inside and Jessica conversed a little bit with the manager, after which he disappeared into the back of the shop, and returned a minute later with a medium sized package wrapped in brown paper and a cage housing a beautiful snow white owl. After adoring his new owl for several moments, he had to agree with his father that the wait was well worth it in the end. Once the owl had been picked up, Nick took the kids to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour for a treat, while he went to Gringotts to conduct some (hopefully) quick business. They sat down at a table with the owl cage on a chair in between them, letting them both stroke it's feathers through the bars, as they ate their favorite ice cream (chocolate and raspberry flavored with chopped nuts). Just shy of an hour later, their father returned.

"Ready to head back home?" he asked.

At their nods, they left Florean's and went to the Leaky Cauldron to Floo home. Once they stepped out of their Fireplace and started to head up to the house, Nick's curiosity got the better of him.

"So have you decided on a name, yet?"

"Um..." Harry hesitantly said, while looking down at his new owl. "I've narrowed it down to four names. I don't want to make a snap decision."

"That's good thinking, son." Nick agreed.

They entered the house, and the whole family gathered in the living room, fawning over the beautiful owl, which was clearly to the owl's liking, Harry finally settled on a name as the owl had flown to sit on top of Irja's head.

"Hedwig."

* * *

Near the end of the month of August, Harry and Jessica was sitting on the bed in their room, looking at the wall opposite the windows, discussing having one final adventure in the ruins up in the mountains, when Camilla knocked on the open door.

"Study time. What are you troublemakers cooking up now?" she asked leaning on the door frame, and with a fond and amused smile.

"We want to make one final attempt at solving a puzzle we found in the ruins, it's a hard one so there must be something interesting behind that door." Harry answered, not taking his eyes of the wall.

Camilla walked into their room; It was a decent sized room, with two windows with a view of the mountains behind the house, with a desk under each window for Harry and Jessica to the left of the door. Along the wall opposite the door was a large double bed, with a door to a private bathroom to the right of the bed, and a walk in closet to the left of it, and in the corner between the back wall and the windowed wall was what looked like a pile of golden non-human armor siting on top of a foot tall chest. The wall with the door was covered entirely with bookcases and shelves, which was filled with books of all kinds, some of which they had found in the ruins, but also trinkets, odds and ends, a sword hilt, three (mostly) whole clay urns with beautiful paintings on, broken equipment used for Gods knows what, a few glass jars with rare potion ingredients from the ruins underground gardens (or what sure looked like a garden now days), gems, crystals and nuggets of precious metals like platinum and thaumium. And floating through out the room was the "dry-aquarium" fishes swimming (flying) about.

But the crown jewel of their room was what was painted across the entire right wall: A top down painting of the ruins up in the mountains. Well... at least the part of the surface ruins they had mapped out, the area they had yet to visit was enchanted to look like it was covered in thick permanent fog. Speaking of enchantments, the painting was charmed to reflect the seasons and current weather (though the clouds were mostly transparent, so that you could still see the ruins, even on cloudy days), and folded parchment was nailed to the wall; more detailed maps of certain ground areas, maps of the interior of the buildings that was still standing (mostly), and maps of the chambers, gardens, secret rooms, and threads in different colors showing the extensive underground network of tunnels they had found so far.

And on the floor beneath the painting was several two feet tall chest, covered in piles of parchment; drawings of wall paintings they had found, runes that lined doorways, locations of traps and how to bypass or disable them, solutions (and attempted solutions) to puzzles, potion recipes and spell ideas for bypassing the puzzles that they had yet to figure out how to solve (or pranks, pulled and yet to be pulled), and lists of everything they had brought home with them (what they had taken and were they had taken it from). They had been quite busy since they were six years old.

Camilla let her hand trace from the upper right corner of the painting, where their house was, down towards the middle, where the closest ruins was, and over the mountains and into the fog beyond.

"You have mapped out a fair portion of the mountains." Camilla said as she traced the painting.

"Yeah. We believe we're like one tenth done, or something like that." said Harry.

"Just be careful not to dwell to deeply into Ley-Zum's territory." she cautioned.

"So far he have not bothered us in the least. Though he have been observing us, whenever we go to the northern parts." Jessica said.

"Maybe so, but you still need to be careful. He might change his mind for no apparent reason, especially once you cross the high mountains." their mother cautioned.

"Yeah." Jessica said with a sigh, looking at the hidden area of the wall map.

"So. What have you found this time that have captured your attention?" Camilla asked after a moment of silence.

"Last time we were there, we found a tunnel that leads to the catacombs beneath Sky-Reach Temple." Harry said with no small amount of excitement, as he jumped of the bed and went to point at a tower that poked out of the fog about ten inches from the fog-border on the far left.

"At least, that what we managed to translate of the runes on the doorway." Jessica shimmed in.

"Unchartered territory?" Camilla asked as she looked at the tower that was poking out of the fog, that Harry was pointing at, one eyebrow raised. "I said it before, and I'm saying it again: just be careful."

"We will be. And it won't be unchartered for much longer." Jessica said confidently.

"And the puzzle you mentioned?" Camilla asked.

"The floor of the tunnel is covered with runes, preventing us from just walking straight in. After many attempts we were close to give up, but as a joke, we began jumping around between rune clusters." Harry began.

"And as we did we managed to get a few meters onto the tunnel before we were expelled from it." Jessica finished.

Camilla smiled at them. "Sounds like a fun puzzle." after they nodded she said "Come along now. The quicker you finish your lessons, the quicker you can have your adventure."

"Coming" Harry and Jessica said in unison.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore sat in his throne like chair at the Head table in the Great hall at Hogwarts, his elbows on the edge of the table and his fingers intertwined. The food on his plate should be quite appetizing, but the First Stage of his Master Plan had not worked out like he had planed, and that took his appetite away.

Albus sighed, now, in less than a week the school year would begin, and despite almost ten years of searching he had not yet found Harry Potter. Sure, there were rumors that someone were sending letters in young Harry's name, "thank you" letters, to those who would send presents to him. But Albus was skeptical, once he had found an article in _the Daily Prophet_ where some family he had never heard of before had thanked for every letter and present that had been sent for Harry Potter on his fifth birthday, Albus had then sent a letter of his own.

That letter had been charmed to record the magical signatures of the people in the near by area once the letter had been opened, and then that information had been stored in the magic that made up the reply paper. The results had, at first, confused Albus; the Ambient Magic levels had been through the roof, which in itself had made the recording hard read, but there had also been the very clear, and very near, presence of a magical creature, whose signature he had never seen before, that worried Albus. But there had also been some information that was easy to make out, there were four people where ever the recipient of "Harry Potter's" letter lived; one was extremely powerful, someone that almost could give Albus himself a run for his money. Another was not all that powerful, at leas not when compared to himself, one that was vaguely familiar. The last two were very weak and unstable, something that was associated with young people.

One of the children had the Magical Signature of Harry Potter, but when Albus had taken a closer look because of the massive amount of Ambient Magic, he found that Harry's Signature was inter layered with another Signature, a Signature that closely resembled the powerful one, and was almost identical to the other child.

With this information, Albus had come to a conclusion: whoever claimed to house Harry had somehow found him, copied his Magical Signature and over layered it on top of the Signature of one of his own children, twin children given that the two children's Signatures was almost identical.

Why they did this was easy to figure out: power and money. But that would only last them until their little ruse was revealed. Sadly, he could not call their bluff just yet, they had to strong a claim to be housing Harry Potter for Albus to prove them wrong at this time. But that was not really a big issue, once he had found the real Harry, and had gotten the boy, his money and his political power back under his control where it belonged, he could easily bring the impostor family to ruin.

But what he could not figure out was were the real Harry was.

"Albus? Albus!" Minerva McGonagall's voice brought him out of his musings.

"Yes, Minerva?" he answered.

"Have You still not heard anything about the boy?" she asked worriedly.

Dumbledore sighed again. "I'm afraid not, Minerva. All my attempts at finding the boy has failed. I have traveled all over the country and used every charm and ritual that I know of trying to find the boy. But, alas, I'm afraid they have all failed."

"Marvelous. Now we can stop worrying about the Potter spawn, and our year may continue on in peace." a voice was heard from further down the table.

"Severus!" McGonagall said sharply.

"Ah, but Severus, my boy. All is not lost, young Harry Potter's name is still on the school roster. We will probably see him once school starts." Dumbledore said, ignoring Minerva's tone.

"If he will arrive here on September first, then why searching for him?" Pomona Sprout said from Dumbledore's other side.

Dumbledore resisted the urge to sigh yet again, was it really that hard to understand? He needed to secure the resources that the Potter name could give him, how else was he supposed to show people of the Wizengamot the Way of the Light, if the Leader of the Light himself did not have access to political power and Galleons?

"I'm worried about him, Pomona. There are a lot of people out there who would use his money and fame to further their own goals. And he is far to young to take care of himself." he said.

"If Mr Potter is still listed on the roster he is at the very least alive. Could he be under a Fidelus?" Filius Flitwick's squeaky voice piped up.

"That is a possibility Filius." Dumbledore said.

Snape rose angrily from the table and stormed out of the Great Hall, muttering under his breath about how "Potter's spawn is probably nothing more than a egoistical, spoiled brat".

Once the doors had slammed shut McGonagall leaned over to Dumbledore and whispered "Is it really such a good idea to keep him here when Mr Potter attends, Albus? You know how he and James could not stand one another."

"Ah, Minerva. It is much to late to look for a new professor now, besides, I trust Severus."

"I know, but Severus is quite likely to hold a grudge against Mr Potter, solely as an extension of the grudge he held against James."

"Come now, Minerva. Severus have suffered just as much as the rest of us with the passing of Lily and James. I'm sure that Severus have gotten over his dark past and will treat Harry like every other student at this school." was Dumbledore's sage answer.

McGonagall sighed and muttered under her breath "And we all know how well _that_ is."

* * *

Just past noon on the Thursday before September first, when Harry had finished his Potion theory homework with Nick in the kitchen (having consumed a large plate of berry cookies between the two of them, much to the joy or Irja), while Jessica was practicing Family Magic with Camilla in the library. And after a short, hushed conversation with his father to give Irja some orders (Even though Irja was a Family House Elf, she _was_ bound to Harry specifically, as such; she preferred for Harry to give her orders (which felt weird; to basically relay Nick's orders to Irja when she was only a few steeps away doing dishes.)) Harry went to the library to check in on his sister.

Sticking his head into the library quietly, so as to not disturb his mother and sister if they were doing something delicate, he was greeted by a confusing yet amusing sight.

His mother and sister were sitting by the large table, close to the entrance, playing a game of wizard chess. Jessica was slightly hunched over, her face was in a mixture of deep concentration and exhaustion and sweat was covering her forehead. While their mother was calmly sitting back like nothing was out of the ordinary.

Now, this in and of itself was not was what neither confusing or amusing. What _was_ though, was that his mother and sister were sitting by the large table furthest from the entrance, playing wizard chess, and his mother and sister was sitting by a small table by one of the windows, playing wizard chess.

Arcing an eyebrow at the sight, he gently asked "Am I interrupting something?"

At his question, all three Jessica looked up, but only the Jessica by the large table furthest from the entrance was looking at him; the Jessica by the window looked out the window while the Jessica closest to him was looking at the door to the guest room. The two Jessica that did not look at him began to shimmer and appear blurry, like smoke that began to disperse, but a second later they retained their solid form.

"Endurance training." Jessica grunted, and her two copies said the same thing at the same exact time, but with an ethereal quality to their voice.

Camilla (only the one closest to him) turned to Harry with a smile.

"I take it you finished Potion with your father for today?" she asked.

"Yea, and we gave Irja something to do, too." Harry replied

"Well, then I think we can end our own lessons for the day." Camilla said, clapping her hand.

As she said _we can end_ Jessica exclaimed loudly "Thank Nethyr" and proceeded to drop her head onto the table with a bang, and as she lost her concentration on her two copies they dispersed into white smoke that hung in the air no more than three seconds. With a fond smile at her daughter, Camilla ended her own two copies, the one by the window and the one by the real Jessica.

"You need to rest for the remainder of the day, dear. You two can go of exploring tomorrow." Camilla said as she moved out of the room, but before she turned the corner she said in a proud tone "You did great today, Jessie."

"Thanks mum." she replied, panting slightly, but not lifting her head from the table, only turning so she could flash a smile at her mother.

Their mother returned her smile and walked away. His sisters groan returned Harry's attention to her.

"Help me to bed, will'ya bro?" she said in a low voice, looking and sounding completely spent.

"Sure." was Harry's simple answer.

Harry walked over to Jessica and swung her left arm over his shoulders with his left arm and held her waist close to him with his with his right arm. Playing chess was not exactly a exhausting activity, especially not physically, but holding two _Mirror Images_ while playing three different games was taxing mentally in the extreme: Jessica could barley lift her feets. Harry dragged his sister up the stairs and guided her into their room and dropped her unceremoniously on the bed, but Jessica didn't say anything, she was asleep before they entered the room.

Harry flexed his shoulders, his sister wasn't heavy, but then again, he was an eleven year old boy: he didn't have the muscular build that Oscar had. For a split second Harry had half a mind to leave Jessica laying like she now was, but her position didn't look particularly comfortable so he placed her in a more comfortable one. Satisfied that she would not wake up with a sore neck or something, Harry went to the walk-in closet and took out their two Adventure bags, and began to collect everything he could think of that they would need in the ruins.

After shuffling about for an hour, so as to not disturb Jessica's sleep, he had their bags packed and ready. He went down to the kitchen to spend some quality time with his parents: Just him, his mother and his father.


	5. Chapter 4 - Dungeons and Dragons

**Harry Potter**

**and A Different Kind of Magic**

_**A/N: Double Chapter! Woho! Almost Triple Chapter! Double Woho!**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTHING!**_

* * *

_Chapter 4 – Dungeons and Dragons_

* * *

Awakening the the next morning and finding Jessica was still out like a light, Harry went down to eat some breakfast on his own. Walking into the dining room he saw Irja standing by the oven, looking into a pot, and when she saw Harry sitting down at the table she put down the wooden spoon she was stirring the pot with.

"Good Morning, Master. What would You like to have for Breakfast?" she asked as she walked to the threshold between the kitchen and the dining room, with a big smile on her face.

"Morning. Hmm..." Harry mused, while he made himself comfortable in the chair. "What's on the stove?" he asked, elbow on the table and his head in his hand.

"Your Mother asked me to make Kasha for Her this morning." she replied.

Shrugging, Harry said "Sure, I'll have some. And maybe some sandwiches."

Bowing in acknowledgment, she walked to the kitchen, and returned with plate, glass, utensils and napkin, setting the table for him and the spot where his mother usually sat. Seeing that Irja didn't make the table for his father he asked

"Where's dad?"

Irja paused in setting the table, looking thoughtful for a moment before she answered.

"He is currently at Gringotts."

"Again? This early?" he asked, looking at the clock, it was eight thirty in the morning.

Irja only shrugged one shoulder in response.

Just as Irja began filling his plate, the front door opened and closed, and a few moments later he saw his mother through the kitchen, going to the bathroom. Looking in she saw harry sitting by the table and smiled at him.

"Morning."

"Morning mum." Harry responded in kind before digging in to his breakfast, Kasha, apple juice and a cheese and cucumber sandwich. A minute or so later he was joined by his mother.

Over an hour later Harry was beginning to consider going upstairs and wake up Jessica, but just as he made to leave the table she decided to join them, and grunted something that may or may not have been "morning".

"Good morning, did you sleep well?" Camilla asked upon hearing her. Another grunt was her response.

"I slept in my clothes, apparently." she said, sending a whithering look at Harry.

Unphased by the look, Harry shrugged unapologetically.

"So, you two are of adventuring today?" Camilla asked.

"Yeah." Jessica nodded, waking up more and more by the second.

"Have you packed any safety equipment?"

"Yep, did it last night. We're packed and ready to go." Harry said, drinking up the last of his juice.

"And have you..." Camilla began, but was interrupted by Jessica

"Mum! We've had this conversation every time we've gone to the Old City. We know to be careful, Ok?"

Raising an eyebrow at her daughter, she waited for her to become aware of her morning induced annoyance.

"Sorry."

Smiling at her, Camilla smiled and patted her hand as she made to leave the table. "Just be careful, the worst of the danger has been removed, but the old ruins can still be dangerous." she said as she walked into the living room and took a book from the table. "Irja will watch over you as always." she continued while glancing at Irja, who bowed her head in response before returning to the dishes. With that she smiled at them and walked out on the back porch.

* * *

An hour later when they Harry and Jessica had finished breakfast they practically ran out of the house, Jessica more so then Harry, almost causing Nick, whom had just returned from Gringotts, as they passed him.

"Hi Dad! Bye Dad!" Harry said as he passed, as his sister seemed not to have noticed their father.

"Now be careful out there!" he shouted after his kids.

"Promise!" Harry shouted back over his shoulder, trying to catch up to Jessica.

Nick watched his kids run for the forest like they were chased by the fires of Theren, and chuckled to himself.

"How did it go?" his wife asked, joining him at the front door.

Nick turned to her and gave her a kiss before answering. "Good. Everything is in order, nothing is amiss, no one, yet, suspects a thing."

"I'm glad." Camilla said with a smile. They stood there for a moment, listening to the sound of their kids getting further and further away, before saying "Now that the kids are out of the house..." while giving her husband a suggestive look.

* * *

Harry caught up to his sister just as they got to the Stonehenge-looking area, holding his side.

"Running this close to eating is not good, you know." he panted to her.

"Meh." was her only comment, she seemed not to be so out of it as Harry.

Harry just shook his head at her.

"So, shall I do this, as you seem to be having troubles?" she asked him with an innocent look.

"Ha ha ha. I wonder why that is?" he said sarcastically. Then waved his hand dismissively "Yeah, sure. Go for it."

Jessica just smiled widely at him "You gotta work out more if you can't even keep up with little me."

Harry made a move as if to lunge at her, causing Jessica to dance away from him, towards the center of the structure. When there, she dropped the smile from her face and faced one of the arcs (the one facing the ruins they were going to) and then closed her eyes. For about ten seconds only the chirping of birds was heard, before a scraping noise was heard just as Jessica lifted her arms forward towards the arc, and began chanting.

"**Ina thisa, vansila Asanel os Avanel. Illive andera sense'del monsiv lithe. Sen Nethyr os Theren, andes as sella Zen."**

As she was chanting, light blue wasps of light began to emerge from the stone flooring, and moved to slowly orbit her. When she finished chanting she pulled her hands towards her chest, and then pushed, causing the wasps of light to rush towards the archway, and form a portal within the arc. Three seconds later, the portal was stable, showing a ruined village with the mountains much closer, and in the background the sound of stone scraping against stone could still be heard, though much fainter now.

Jessica turned to look at Harry with satisfaction. "You ready?" she asked.

He picked up Jessica's backpack, as she had dropped it to open the portal, and walked up to her. "Yep."

Jessica hefted her backpack and skipped through the portal, dragging Harry after her.

* * *

Emerging on the other side of the portal, they both sucked in a startled breath, the temperature difference between their home and the ruins was almost 20o Celsius, and even though they were aware of the difference, it was still a bit of a shock to one minute be in a warm late autumn forest, and the next in a chilly mountain breeze.

Looking around them, the area was just like last time they visited. The portal they emerged from was similar to the one they used to get here, but this one had sixteen archways instead of seven, and thus the circle was larger. Another difference was that the archways on this site formed a half circle, rather than a full circle, as the Nexus was at the edge of the village they arrived at.

Moving up the gravel pathway through the village, the buildings here was all remarkably well preserved, ruined, but standing. There was close to thirty buildings here, spread out around a central well that had long ago dried out. Harry didn't pay much attention to the village, as they had been here so many times already, and instead took in the beautiful scenery of the sun standing low in the sky over the western shores of the lake at the foot of the mountain.

He laughed as Jessica quickly dropped her backpack and bounded after a hare she caught sight of, and disappeared amongst the houses, only for the hare to round a corner and run towards Harry but stopped when it saw him. Jessica rounded the corner and the hare darted of downhill, she didn't follow it this time.

"What?" she asked with a grin when she came back to a laughing Harry.

"Too much energy" he mumbled, shock his head and resumed walking through the village.

Once on the other side, they could take a left down towards a fishing village, or right up further into the mountains, and into the Old City. After a fifteen minute walk uphill they reached a tunnel, framed with fine stone pillars with intricate patterns, even the inside of the tunnel was full of carvings. The tunnel lead through the mountain that they could see from home, and into a valley on the other side, where in the ancient city was located.

As they mover through the tunnel, it was light up by floating flames that appeared on both walls, and as they moved down the path, the flames moved along side them. Emerging on the other side, they stopped to take in the picturesque scene before them, no matter how many times they came here, no matter the time of year (and even though the ancient city was nowadays just ruins), it was always beautiful.

Houses, Smithy's, Stables, Arcane Workshops, Herb Gardens and Market Places. Everything a self sustaining city could need and want. And built on top of the highest mountain on the opposite side of the dale, there was a truly massive temple complex, with a tower that stretched all the way up to the clouds, their goal for today.

"Come on." Jessica said, and started skipping down towards the city, humming all the while.

The path down to the city was one of the main ways to enter the city, so the path was lined with flowers and bushes, even if they had not been maintained for a very long time. The hills on this side of the city was spanned with large green fields, that was probably once upon a time the home of various cattle and the like.

Reaching the edge of the city, Jessica put her backpack on the ground and began searching through it.

"Are the maps in your's or mine?" she asked after a moment when she didn't find what she was looking for.

"Hu?" Harry asked stupidly, having been looking at some birds flying overhead. "Oh! Um... Mine, I think." he put his own backpack on the ground and began looking through it, and soon found the maps they had made, and waved them triumphantly in the air.

Putting their backpacks back on, Jessica asked "Should we go straight for Sky-Reach or do something in the dungeons?"

"Um... I don't know how long it will take to solve the jumping puzzle, so I think we should start with Sky-Reach."

"Ok." she said and looked around, then pointed in a certain direction "Onwards!"

They stopped briefly when they passed a Smithy, where Harry saw a not to rusty helmet in the grass. Putting it on and taking up a stick and proclaiming himself to be "King of the valley". Jessica, not about to be outdone (and still having an abnormal amount of energy), picked up her own stick and an impromptu fencing match ensured.

Eventually they made it to a building on the western edge of the city, it was located at a small artificial lake, and had a watermill (as the city was in a valley surrounded by mountain on all sides, they theorized that windmills was useless). The water that passed the water wheel then fell into the underground water pipes that spread through out the city.

Entering the watermill by the "public" entrance, they walked through to the back rooms where the now destroyed water wheel joined the building. They opened a hatch that lead to a service tunnel (for the water pipes). Harry gave the maps to Jessica while he took out a torch, holding it out and Jessica grabbed the head end of it, closing her eyes and focusing for two seconds, and then yanking her hand away as the torch caught on fire.

They moved through the maze of tunnels beneath the city for the better part of two hours. There was no logic behind the layout of the service tunnels, so even though they had been here hundreds of times, they overestimated their ability to navigate the tunnels.

Eventually finding their way, they got to a hole in the wall in one of the deeper service tunnels, a round hole about four feet in diameter, that was probably dug out by some giant bug, based on the hardened slime that covered the walls of the tunnel.

Moving carefully so as to not slip and hurt themselves, they came to an underground cavern after almost ten minutes of slippery crawling through the bug-tunnels. The cavern was massive, roughly shaped as a dome several hundred feets in diameter, with a small lake in the center, and glowing plants covering the entire roof.

They saw a figure at the edge of the "shore", and they moved down the slightly sloping floor towards it. Reaching the water they found Irja waiting for them, and a picnic blanket spread out beside her, complete with some soft pillows to sit on, a large basket with food and drink and a couple of oil lamps for better lighting than the soft blue from the roof.

Harry held out the torch, and Irja waved her hand in its direction, causing it to be snuffed out. They sat down and had a nice lunch, with Irja serving and Harry and Jessica chatting away over a couple of parchments between them.

When finished, they put their backpacks back on, and Harry held out the torch for Jessica to light again, while Irja packed the picnic basked and poped away.

"Right." Harry said. "Now were to?" he asked, looking around. The cave did not have many features that stood out, or could give you an indication of were you were.

"We came from there." Jessica said, pointing. "So... that way."

Walking clockwise around the lake, they walked twenty minutes along the metaphorical clock until they found a natural crack in the cave wall about two feet wide. Consulting the maps before moving further, they moved further downwards through narrow cracks, eventually reaching a underground ravine.

"Climbing time!" Jessica exclaimed with a smile. Looking at Harry as she dropped her backpack, she challenged "Race you!"

"You're on!" he responded in kind "Irja."

Irja poped in, standing behind them while they dug through their backpacks for climbing equipment. Finding what they were looking for, they each scouted out a good looking piece of wall to climb, then looked at Irja for a countdown. She made a circular motion, gathering light in her hand that was forming a lose cage, then moved her hand forward, releasing the light, which floated over to Harry and Jessica and hovered slightly behind and over their heads.

"Three. Two. One. Climb!" she counted, and they were of.

They were almost halfway, with Jessica slightly ahead of Harry when Jessica used her climbing pick on a rather soft patch of rock, causing her to lose her grip and fall.

"Whoa!" she exclaimed as she fell, the word echoing before two rapid pop's were heard.

Harry stopped and looked down.

"You OK?!" he yelled towards the bottom.

There was a moment of silence before an answer was heard

"Yeah!" another pause. "Just high on adrenaline!"

Harry chuckled, and resumed climbing. He only got a few meter further up when he heard his sisters voice again.

"Don't think I've lost just yet!"

Harry didn't bother picking up his pace at hearing that, he didn't want to start over now that he had such an easy win. After having climbed about three quarters of the way to the top he groaned. There, up a head, was a out jutting cliff face, really difficult to climb and easy to lose your grip. But by unspoken rule, they were not allowed to move to much sideways, so he paused to give his already tired muscles some rest, before moving on.

It was indeed a difficult climb, and it slowed him down a lot, the cliff face causing him to feel like he was climbing in the roof (not even close, but it sure felt like it). He was almost past the difficult part when he heard his sister behind him.

"Ha! Told you! I'm soon past you!"

"In Your dreams!"

Harry did reach the top first, but Jessica was less than a minute behind him. They lay down on the edge to catch their breath when Irja poped up with their bags and other things they left at the bottom. She waited for them to catch their breath, then dismissed the light she had summoned. After they had put their bags on she gave the torch to Harry, lit it up, and poped over to be behind Jessica.

The three of them moved along the narrow edge of the ravine length wise until they reached the end, where they found another bug-tunnel that spiraled slightly upwards. Irja stayed at the bottom of it, while Harry and Jessica climbed the slippery tunnel, which took them almost half an hour.

"Were up!" Jessica shouted down the tunnel, when they were both safely in the next room.

Irja poped in beside them, and bowed before poping away again.

The room they were in was a machine room of some kind, with massive gears and tubes running every where. To the left from where they were standing was a three foot wide and twenty foot long trench, where the front gates of the temple they were now underneath was lowered into. They had no idea how to open the gate, and had not yet found any way into the temple, other than the way they just took.

They took a right, and towards the end of the room there was a staircase leading up to the courtyard above, that emerged with a small building that was halfway built into the outer walls surrounding the temple.

Whereas the city below them was a ruined city, overgrown with plant life over the years since it was abandoned, the temple was maintained by some kind of magic, something that allowed the tenants of the temple to rebuild and replant without magic returning things to how things were before any changes (their best guess as to the state of the temple).

The temple, and by extension the city and villages around it, had been abandoned due to war. And it was painfully visible inside the temple walls. The ground was filled with smoldering craters, the trees were nothing but charred stick pointing towards the sky, the once bright stone pathway was shattered and dull, the skeletons of wooden buildings were on fire, fueled by magic.

And moving up from the temple gate, were the blackened temple itself, its stone walls tall and proud despite being discolored. The fact that it was still standing with hardly any signs of battle (aside from the black scorch marks) was a testament to the ingenuity of its creator, magical and mundane, who predated even the now extinct Dwarven race.

Harry looked up towards the tower at the top of the mountain. The temple was mainly build inside the mountain, with basically only the tower and a courtyard outside of it. They walked to the inner gates of the courtyard, were the entrance to the underground areas was. The outer gate was a massive slab, reinforced by magic, that was simply lowered into the machine room beneath, while the inner gates was a massive set of double doors, that had been partially destroyed somehow; the bottom left part of the right door looked to have been blown apart, leaving the entire left door strangely untouched.

Going through the hole in the door, which was quite large, sort of a quarter circle twelve feet wide at the base, they walked down a corridor a hundred feet wide, almost two hundred feet tall and over one thousand feet long, with a floor made up of solid magic, giving of a light blue glow.

But neither Harry nor Jessica wanted to walk on the magical floor; for underneath it was a river of molten lava. So they stuck to walking on the stone floor that was along the side of the corridor. The magic that separated them from the lava beneath was unlikely to fail, but it was simply to nerve-racking to walk on it.

If the corridor was massive, then the circular room at the end of it was truly humongous. Located directly beneath the tower, there was six arcs that meet at the top center of the domed room, and a huge chandelier hanging in the center, or used to hang there; now it was nothing but a twisted heap of metal on the floor in the center or the room.

Between the foot of each arc was a corridor, much like the one they just entered from, leading to various parts of the temple. After consulting their map, if the corridor they entered from was one, and there was six corridors, counting clockwise they entered corridor number five.

Corridor five was an upward moving one, that lead to a square room not quite as large as the previous, but still large. Jessica thought it was some kind of alchemical research room, while Harry thought it was a Herb garden or a relaxing spot, they had not came to agree as to what it once was, nor had they found any clues that could answer the question.

On the left wall was a smaller corridor leading to what they dubbed "room four", and a similar corridor on the right wall lead to "room six", and all along the far wall was several buildings the size of their house. Jessica led them to the second building from the right, and after looking around in the various rooms Harry said

"This can't be the right one?"

Receiving no answer, he looked around, and groaned when he did not see his sister anywhere.

"JESSICA!"

"In here!"

Moving towards the room from where he thought he heard her voice, he raised one eyebrow when he found the room empty.

"Where?"

"Here"

There was another room further inside, and once he entered Harry stopped, staring for a moment before he slapped his face to snap out of it. Jessica's giggles was not what he wanted to hear at that moment.

For standing in the room next to a bed, was Jessica, holding something that made human "scandalous clothing" to appear modest by comparison.

_How did the temple people dress? No, never mind. Don't answer that._

Holding one hand over his face and the other on his hip he instead asked out loud

"Are you quite done with that?"

Jessica just descended further into giggles.

"Aww... You don't want to see me try it on?"

"NO!" Harry shouted, before he was quite embarrassed but now he was starting to panic.

Jessica dropped the... clothes was not quite the right word, because she needed her arms to clutch at her stomach as she laughed to hard. Harry just grumbled and said he would be outside. Jessica's laughter entered the "out of control" state then.

* * *

Harry stood outside the building for over an hour, grumbling to himself, while Jessica laughed away inside, the sound making its way to him did not help him with his embarrassment. He was 100% sure that she had lead him there on purpose! They had found this place less than a year ago, and when they found the... clothing... they had at first not understood what it was, so they asked Irja.

She answered by wearing it.

That was the first time Harry experienced raging hormones, and after having The Talk with his father, Harry was told that he was entering the first stages of puberty, what that meant, and that it would get worse. And _the worst_ part was that it would last for up to a decade. A _decade_. Harry was just over a decade old!

He moaned and rubbed his hands over his face, he hated what his life would be like. He turned at the sound of more giggles getting closer, Jessica had finally gotten her laughter... mostly under control. Harry crossed his arms over his chest.

"You done?" he asked, still a little red from embarrassment.

Jessica giggled, cleared her throat, closed her eyes and pressed her lips together while silently giggling, she cleared her throat again, took a deep breath and slowly let it out before looking at her truly embarrassed brother.

"Now I am. Sorry."

Harry just grumbled, and stomped over to the right most building. Moving to the upper floor, they found another bug-tunnel, this one only forty feet long or so, leading to a chamber fifty feet long and thirty wide. There was a simple wooden door on the wall to the left, but otherwise the room was empty.

Stepping through, they found themselves in a room with the first puzzle. Harry took out a stack of parchment with puzzle solutions, and shuffled through it until he found the right one. But instead of looking at the solution, as they had visited this one many times and could do this one from memory, they stepped to either side or the room, counted aloud, and pressed at a set of buttons on either wall in the correct pattern as they counted.

Two stone doors opened, one at either end of the room (the wooden one they entered from was a side door beside one set of buttons.)

The next room was a library, but almost every book had turned to dust, and the ones that had not, they had already salvaged and brought home. Moving through the library, they pulled a torch-lever that opened the door that lead further into the temple complex.

The door reveled a short corridor with wooden doors on either side, and emerged into a classroom of some kind; there were a desk along the back wall, and the students desk was raised in a sort of staircase style, so every student could see the teacher.

The corridor was on one side of the teachers desk, and on the other side was a similar corridor, with wooden doors on either side. Pulling another torch-lever to open the door at the end, revealed a room of the same size as the library, but this room was filled with phials and jars, some filled with strange... stuff, but most was either empty of broken. And like the library, there was a stone door at the opposite end. They pressed the button to enter, waited for the door to close as they took up position at either set of buttons, and pushed the right buttons as they counted aloud.

The next room was, again, a replica of what could be found on the other mirrored side. But this room had a bug-tunnel in the center of the roof, the slime having dripped onto the floor below, but had since hardened. They took out rope and hook to get up to the floor above them. The room was eight feet tall, and the bugs had eaten through about five feet of floor/roof, so they needed a few tries of throwing the hook before they could climb up.

The room above was a storage room, filled with broken crates and barrels. There was only one simple, but heavy wooden door out of the room, that lead to a kitchen. Or another alchemical laboratory... either way, there was several fire pits and benches in the room, so it could be either.

The next room was a garden, with a serene pond in the middle, the greenery around it was not so serene though, as it was now all on flames, fueled by magic like the courtyard. They walked down a long curved corridor with many doors leading to individual bedrooms along its sides, and emerged in a room like the huge room that was inside the inner temple gates, this one directly above the first one, only much smaller.

They continued down another path, that lead to a room with a round stone door at the opposite end of where they entered from, and a pedestal with a bowl in the middle, while the walls was covered in drawings and runes. This was the only potion-based puzzle they had solved so far. Jessica reached into her backpack and took out a phial of red liquid, and began to slowly pore its content into the bowl until the door rolled to the side. She put the stopper back in the phial, and they moved to the next room.

It was a square room with four pillars evenly spread out in the middle, and there was two ladders leading to the "upper" floor on the left and right wall, but that floor had collapsed and was now rubble on the "lower" floor, the only indication of where the floor once were, was the small pieces of floor/roof that was attached to the walls and pillars.

"Do you wanna take the upper floor or lower?" Harry asked

Jessica shrugged "Either. I don't really care"

"Okey... I take upper then."

"Sure."

Harry dumped his backpack and climbed one of the ladders, and stood on the narrow lip of flooring that was left. He edged his was sideways with his back to the wall, until he was right across from one of the pillars. He took careful aim, bend his knees and jumped. The distance was not to far for jumping, but Harry only barely caught the edge of the lip of floor on the pillar, he hang there for a moment getting his breath back after having had the wind knocked out of him from hitting the pillar.

With a grunting effort, he lifted himself up onto the small flooring, and made his way around the round pillar while hugging it. On the opposite side of where he jumped, there was a small vertical slot in a circular stone. He took out his knife from his belt, and slid it into the slit.

"Ready?" he called

"Ready." came Jessica's response

"On three. One. Two. Three."

Harry turned the knife counter-clockwise at the same time as Jessica turned a similar stone on the first floor clockwise. There was a scraping noise like at the Nexus back home, and Harry withdrew his knife, sheathed it, then turned around and jumped to the next pillar. The pillars was further from the side walls than they were from each other, so while this jump was easier and he didn't just barley catch the edge with his hands, he instead almost bounced off of the pillar as his chest hit it, but kept from falling by tightly hugging the pillar.

Harry took out his knife again, while trying to get his air back after having it once again knocked out of him.

"One two three!"

They turned at the same time, and the noise grew louder. He jumped to the third pillar, turned the knife on the count of three, the noise grew, he jumped to the last pillar, and at the final turn of their knife the noise stopped, and the door opened.

Harry drew a relieved breath, it was not meant for you to have to jump between pillars, but with the floor gone, it was now a close call to get the door open in time.

He hunched, and proceeded to hang of the floor-lip before dropping down to the lower floor. He rubbed his chest as Jessica gave him a phial with a clear liquid in it.

"Thanks" he said and downed the potion.

He breathed in deeply as the potion eased his breathing after having the wind knocked out of him five times in less than a minute.

"You need a minute?" Jessica asked, worry written all over her face.

Harry took a deep breath and rolled his shoulders.

"No, I'm good. Thanks" he said with a smile.

"Ok" she said, relived.

After moving down a short corridor, they came to a fairly large, half circular room, with one wide corridor along the straight wall, and five narrower corridors along the curved wall, the one they came from being on one end.

"So... Here we are." Jessica said, while eying the corridor on the straight wall.

"Yep." Harry said, plopping the p.

The floor of the corridor was made up by one by one feet square blocks, eight wide and maybe forty along the length of the corridor.

"You have the papers for this?" she asked while still looking at the floor of the corridor as if it held the answer to every question she had.

Harry shifted through the stack for a moment before he asked

"Did we ever write anything down of this place?"

Jessica turned to look at him with a questioning look, before she blinked

"I don't think so."

"Right. So we do this from scratch then."

Harry found a fixture to put the torch in, put his bag on the floor which was soon joined by his sister's, then took out some new parchment, ink and quill. He dipped the quill in the ink before putting the quill to the parchment and said

"Ok, so... this is... Floor Puzzle number... five?" he said as he wrote.

"I think it's number four." Jessica said after a moment of thought.

Harry looked up at her, with a thoughtful look on his face.

"Ok, let's see here, then... We got the garden, One." he said holding up one finger

"The one in the Fire Room, Two." Jessica continued

"The one that's under water, Three."

"And this one, Four" she gestured at the corridor.

"What about the Fake-Ravine-Thinge-Mac-Jigge-Thinge... Binge... Dinge?" he asked waving his hand as he searched for descriptive words.

Jessica giggled at his wording, before thinking on it.

"I thought we counted that as an illusion puzzle?"

"Ow! Right." he said, crossing out the number and jotting down the correct one.

"Floor Puzzle number Four; Jump, You Fool!" he said in a half question.

He took his sisters giggles as an agreement.

"So, what's the fir... st..." he asked looking up at where he though she was standing, but found the spot empty, he looked towards the puzzle and found her jumping around on the tiles.

"First tile is _Neval_." she said, standing on one leg on the tile furthest to the right of the first row.

Harry wrote down a short summary of what they had found, totaling at a few rows of text, before he took another parchment and made a eight square wide, twenty square tall grid. He turned the parchment up side down and filled in the bottom right most square with the proper rune.

"Second is _Etin_, third is _Avani_." she called while he was making the grid. "Fourth is _Laz_, and fifth is... Agh!" she continued before she was banished back out the corridor.

"Take it easy. I wasn't ready." he said as Jessica picked herself up off of the floor.

"Okey, Okey. Sorry. Your turn." she said as she moved over to the floor where Harry had sat down to write down their progress.

Harry got up and gave her the quill, before moving to the corridor and took a closer look at the tiles.

"First was _Neval_?" he asked.

"Yeah."

He stepped onto the right most rune.

"Next?"

"Um..."

"You forgot already?" he asked amused as he looked at her.

"Hush you!" she responded, just a little embarrassed, causing Harry to chuckle.

"_Etin_"

He jumped to the correct rune

"Third from the right." he said over his shoulder

"Got it."

"Next was... _Laz_?"

"No, that one was the fourth one... um... I don't know... _Aradi_? Maybe?"

Harry jumped to that rune, only to be promptly ejected.

"Nope" he groaned from his lying position on the floor.

They kept at it like that for several hours, taking turns jumping and writing. They were summarily ejected almost every time, but slowly they made progress. Harry even managed to guess correctly five runes in a row just before the middle. They had made it twenty two tiles into the corridor when Irja poped in, and due to the echo in the stone room, Jessica missed her jump and was ejected straight into Irja's arms.

"Hey Irja!" she said with a ear splitting grin "Nice to run into you here."

"Indeed, Young Mistress." she said as she released her from the impromptu hug. "It's bed time. Mistress do not want You to fall asleep on the train to school, just because You did not get to sleep on time."

"Fine. My bum is starting to get sore from this sh... um, from this stupid puzzle." Harry said, waving a hand towards the corridor, the other rubbing his rear end.

"Would You like to sleep here, or would You like to sleep at home?" Irja asked.

Harry and Jessica looked at each other, and shrugged at the other at the same time.

"We'll sleep here, it's part of the feeling of adventuring"

Irja bowed "Very well, I'll return with sleeping bags shortly."

"And bring some rejuvenation potions, please? I, for one, think I need one if I'm not gonna wake up tomorrow all sore."

"I will, master"

And with that she poped away to bring the requested items. Harry and Jessica packed away their stuff into neat piles over by the wall next to the offending puzzle, and was just done when Irja returned.

She brought sleeping bags and two potion phials and a small basked with a late night assortment of food. They ate while chatting lightly with Irja about the ruins in general, and once they were done she packed away the dinner and poped away with the basked, as Harry and Jessica took off shoes, jackets and pants and dress respectively, until they were only in underwear and T-shirt. They were just jumping into their sleeping bags when Irja returned and went to sit on her knees a little ways away from them, overlooking their sleep. It wasn't long before they started yawning and eventually fall asleep, from the days excitement and the mild food-coma.

* * *

Harry awoke some time the next morning in pitch black darkness. Groaning as he rubbed his face to try to get his bearings, he had to close his eyes as a torch was lit.

"Good Morning, Master." came a much to cheerful voice in Harry's opinion.

"Morn'ng" he grunted in response.

He looked to his right where his sister was still sleeping without a care in the world. Harry grinned as he began poking at her side. She only turned away from him, mumbling something he thought was "five more minutes".

"I can make waffles for breakfast, if You want." said Irja from her sitting position.

Jessica sat up like a jack-in-a-box.

"Yes, please!" she said sweetly, then swayed "Whoa. Got up to fast."

Harry laughed, as Irja smiled and then poped away to bring breakfast. They dressed and packed away the sleeping bags while they waited for Irja's return. When she did, they ate in silence, and once done Irja poped home with sleeping bags and the remnants of breakfast.

Resuming from where they left of the night before, they at first decided to try the puzzle without looking at their notes, but quickly abandoned the idea when they only completed a few tiles. It was only after Harry jutted down the latest rune they figured out that he saw a something on the parchment.

"Hey, Jessy!" he called into the corridor, and watched as she came flying towards him, and skid to a stop at his feets.

"What?" she asked from her position on the floor.

"I think I found something."

He took her outstretched hand and pulled her to her feet, and showed the grid they had so far of the puzzle.

"Look at this." he said pointing to the latest runes they had discovered.

"Yeah." she said, unsure of what she was supposed to see.

"_Vah_, _Lene_, _Mija_, _Voz_, _Eth_, _Yno_." Harry said, pointing at each of the last runes.

"Yeah." she said, still unsure of what Harry saw.

"'_Vahlen _Mijvoz'eth'. 'Purified under Starry Sky'. What do you want to bet that the next word is 'of Dawn', _'Ynisenia_'?_"_

Jessica raised one eyebrow and tilted her head, and as she looked at each rune in turn, she began to see what Harry meant. Smiling, she looked at the bottom of the chart. Sure enough, the runes was not as random as they first though. They had not noticed before now, as the grammar of the early phrases made it hard to make the connection to words, as they had double meanings and needed to be bent to form proper words, or in some cases was used as numbers.

Turning the parchment on it's side, they sat down and wrote down the phrase they had now found. It was a phrase used to thank the "Gods of Old", and the phrase was quite often found in the spell books they had found in the ruins.

Having a fair idea of what was most likely the solution, Harry was next up, and called out each rune and their position, and he got eight right in a row, before he came to a particular selection of runes that he did not recognize to belong to the phrase they were trying. So he made a guess, which was wrong of course, and was ejected from the corridor.

"What happened?" Jessica asked when he came flying.

"I didn't recognize any of the runes of the next row. The next rune of the phrase is _Ha_, right?"

"No, it's _Ga_, _Sothe'gasi_."

"Ah."

"No, I said it's _Ga_."

"Ha ha."

"No, your not listening to me, its..." she jumped away from Harry as he began tickling her.

"Okay, smarty pants. You do it."

She jumped onto the first rune, and said each rune in an annoying sing-song voice as she landed on each.

"_Nev-eth-ava Liz-ot-en Sia-dha Ser-vec-is-ho Ne-ne-vi-sen Var-ek-tha-sa Ley-sen-zu Ava-ot-vec Vah-len Mij-voz-eth Yni-sen-ia Ho-vi-nes-ac-erth-ia Sot-he_..."

"So tell me... where is the next rune?" He called down the hallway.

"Maybe they use an older rune for _Ga_ here." she called back.

"Which is?"

"I don't know. I guess were back to guessing. Wait! The next rune I recognize: _Ryd_."

"That would match the next rune in the phrase, Yeah. But we still need a substitute for _Ga_."

Harry saw his sister make a jump, but came flying towards him the next second.

"It's not the forth from the left." she informed him.

After figuring out the correct rune, they only had nine more to go, and they did not pose any problem as they matched with what they knew.

"Yes!" Harry exclaimed as he jumped of the last rune.

"You made it through?"

"Yeah. I appear to be directly below the tower now. You've got to see this."

"I can't take both backpacks!"

"Easily solved!" he yelled.

Then in a normal voice he said "Irja", after having her poping in he told her to get their bags, and he snickered when he could swear he heard Jessica saying "Ow" in a low voice. She appeared to have heard him snickering, for when she made it through she hit him in the arm.

They could not figure out the purpose of the tower, for it was only a round tower with a wide spiraling staircase alongside the outer wall, going all the way to the top of the tower. It was quite a exhausting climb, over one thousand feet straight up.

When they saw that they were finally at the top, they lay down on the stone floor at the top of the tower. Nine pillars, fifty feet tall, along the edge of the top floor once held up a roof, but now only the sky was above the top floor.

After a moment of rest, they walked over to the edge, mindful to not get to close, as there was no railing.

The view was breathtaking. They were facing east, where they saw the massive forest their father sometimes took them hunting for deer in. Moving to look south, they were greeted with a view of the lake behind their home and the city below. And if they squinted they could see the ocean beyond the forest. To the west was the majority of the mountain ridge, that the mountain the temple stood on was part of, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Lastly moving around the edge to look northwards, they saw what was the metropolis of the ancient world. Even in ruins, it was a marvelous sight to behold, it had a huge dome in the distance, probably close to the center, and the metropolis stretched all along the foot of the mountains to the northwest and created a remarkably straight line in the northeast direction, bordering with the forest.

Harry was looking over the enormous city, with his jaw on the floor, thinking _One tenth of the city explored? More like One tenth _of a percent_!_. He was directed to pick up his jaw by his sister.

"Pick up your jaw. We got company."

Looking at Jessica, Harry followed her line of sight to see what she saw. There, not to distantly to the northwest, over the mountains were a shape flying straight towards them.

The shape got closer at an amazing speed, and when it was only a few hundred feet away from the tower, it banked away from the tower. It flew out over the eastern forest before making a wide turn and once more heading for the tower at a slower speed.

The massive dragon grabbed hold of the sides of the one hundred feet diameter tower, making the tower almost look lite a roosting stick that owls used by comparison, the stones cracking from the pressure of its enormous claws. It spread its wings majestically towards the sky, causing the mid day suns rays to reflect from the polished scales of its wings. It rumbled low in its throat, making the entire tower shake, as it lowered its head towards Harry and Jessica.

They crouched slightly so they didn't fall from the shaking, which amazingly did not cause the tower to collapse. Jessica smiled up at the dragon and said

"Hello Ley'zum."

* * *

_**A/N: Feel free to ask any questions you may have surrounding the ruins. Hermione will one day ask some questions about it, and I have some already written down, but if you want to know something, I might make her ask it for you :)**_

_**Next Chapter: Off to Hogwarts**_


	6. Chapter 5 - Off to Hogwarts

**Harry Potter**

**and A Different Kind of Magic**

_**A/N: For those of you that think "That's a bit to much exploration for them to do the weekend before going to Hogwarts."**_

_**No, not really. The only ACTUAL exploration they did last chapter was solving the jumping-puzzle, walking up one big-ass-long staircase and look around at the top of the tower. Everything else they had already done progressively since they were 6; the fishing village, "portal" village and the city before they entered the temple have a grand total of maybe 800 to 1000 buildings. The village I live in (IRL) is about that size, and I can have a decent map done in a few days, I mean really... how long does it takes to draw a square? 2 seconds?**_

_**The temple itself is not as big as Harry or Jessica thinks, I can say without spoiling than they think they have (before the last adventure) mapped out 10%, but it's closer to 40-50%. And no, they will not map out 100%, that's not the focus of this story.**_

"_**It's to dangerous for kids that age to walk around ruins."**_

_**I've hinted at (maybe not obvious enough) that their mother and Irja have visited the ruins themselves, and thus they have removed anything REALLY dangerous. That, and Camilla do not let her children near the place without Irja supervising them.**_

_**And no, Nick is not Nicolas Flamel.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own ANYTHING!**_

_**Chapter Uploaded: 21 november 2015**_

_**Chapter Edited: -**_

* * *

_Chapter 5 – Off to Hogwarts_

* * *

Harry and Jessica burst into their parents bedroom in the early morning on the first of September, laughing as they jumped up into their bed.

"Wake up! It's morning!" Jessica gushed, as she landed on a rather sensitive spot of her father.

"Ghauwa!" he exclaimed as he shot upright.

"We're going to Hogwarts! Up, Up, UP!" Harry half shouted, crawling into bed on his mothers side.

Camilla chuckled tiredly at the children's eagerness, yawned and sat up. And as she did, the blanket fell off of her chest, exposing her bare breast, causing Harry to throw himself backwards of the bed rather comically.

"GAH! My Eyes!" he complained, rolling around on the floor while clawing at his eyes.

Jessica giggled at the sight. "It's not like you haven't seen breast before. What's with the theatrics?"

Harry's head peeked up from the floor over the edge of the bed, peek-a-boo-style. "It's Mum!" he said, matter of factly while glaring.

"Strong argument there, son." Nick chuckled, wincing slightly from Jessica's unintentional attack.

Harry shifted his glare to his father, but in doing so, caught sight of his mothers breast again, and subsequently returned to clawing at his eyes and roll on the floor.

"Argh. My eyes... Ugh. My Eyes can never again... Ohuw. … see the light of dawn. Ahh."

While Nick left the bed to get dressed, Camilla reached behind her to grab her pillow, and threw it at Harry.

"Ok, that's enough, Shakespeare."

"Oohhw... HOUF! Geh, thanks mum."

"Go wake Irja and get some breakfast." she said as she to got out of bed to get dressed.

Harry snorted. "Yeah, right. Like I ever need to wake _her_ up, she wakes if I hiccup in my sleep"

After breakfast was eaten, the content of trunks were double checked, trunks were shrunken and pocketed and Hedwig was sent on her way (no need for her to sit in her cage for the entire train ride), they left the house and walked to the fireplace at the bottom of the gravel path downhill. Well, Camilla and Nick walked, Harry and Jessica ran down, and seeing that their parents were sooo slow, ran back up, and repeated.

* * *

After flooing to a friend of their father, the kids were on their best behavior, as they had decided to walk from there to the train station, a little over a one hour walk at a normal pace. The train left at eleven sharp, and they arrived in London just before nine, so after some short pleasantries with their fathers friends family, they enjoyed the stroll through the British Capital, window-shopping and commenting on those who were obviously witches or wizards with F.S.Z. (Fashion-Sense Zero).

They had just entered King's Cross shortly before ten thirty, when the family was stopped by a voice calling out.

"Nick? Hey, Nick!"

Their father turned, as did the rest of his family, watching as a man (that was just a little on the puggy side) walk up to them, followed by a woman probably in her thirties carrying a small child of maybe three or four, and a boy around Harry's and Jessica's age pulling one handedly a trolley with his trunks and owl cage on it behind him.

Nick looked at the man for a moment before turning his gaze to whom could only be his wife. But as he didn't know who the man was after a few seconds, he asked as much.

"I'm sorry. But who are you?"

"You hurt me, Wisey." the unknown man responded with a wide smile.

Harry though it was quite funny to see how his father was racking his brain to recognize the man, but at the last words the final piece needed for the puzzle clicked; his eyes widened comically in recognition, and a second later he sported a grin just as wide as the other man, as Nick threw his arms forward for an embrace.

"Beaver!" Nick half shouted, while jogging up to the man and give him a great slap-on-the-back hug. "I haven't seen you in, what? Fifteen years? It's good to see you Samuel." he asked with his grin still plastered on his face.

"Something like that. I hardly recognized you when I first saw you. You've slimed down nicely, Nick." Samuel said looking Nick over.

With a chuckle he threw back "And once I got rid of it, you felt like picking it back up?", eying Samuel with a raised eyebrow.

A heartily bellow laugh was his answer. "Oh! You know me; always picking up after you." he said while patting his belly.

Nick smiled at his friend, and glanced at who could only be his friends very amused wife. "Introduce us, will you?"

Puffin up his chest, Samuel proudly introduced his family.

"Nick, meet my lovely wife of twelve years: Maria Philipson." his wife curtsied slightly, saying "Pleased to meet you."

"My oldest son: Noah, who is beginning his third year at Hogwarts this year." Noah smiled and waved his free hand in greeting while saying "Hullo."

"And my second son: Michael." Michael was obviously a very shy boy, and ducked his head into the crook of his mothers neck, who was still carrying him. Samuel chuckled at his son. "Come on, Mike. Say hello to these nice people."

Little Michael peeked over from his mother, and whispered "Hi" to which Jessica "Ohh"-ed with clasped hands.

"Your turn, Wisey." Samuel grinned.

Nick proceeded to introduce his own family. Once done Samuel looked at Harry and Jessica and asked "You kids twins?" at the same time Maria asked Camilla "You have a different surname?". The other couple looked at each other and laughed, then turned to them expectantly.

"There are some heritage reason to why I can not marry into a different name. And they are not twins, Jessica is our biological child and Harry is adopted." Camilla answered.

"You look like twins to me." Noah said from his leaning position against his trolley, tilting his head as he studied Harry and Jessica intently.

"I was given a potion when I was very young to change the color of my eyes, and my hair is dyed and styled like my sister." Harry said, looking at his father. And after he nodded at him he continued. "It makes people ask less questions about... why I'm adopted."

"So we would appreciate it if you didn't spread it around." Nick said with a somewhat low voice, and before Samuel could say anything he finished "At least until Christmas."

Twisting his mouth thinking, Samuel eventually replied "OK" he looked at Noah. Who, when he realized that his father was silently asking him not to spread it around, put one hand over his heart and the other in the air "Promise. I wont say anything they wont."

When Nick nodded in thanks, Samuel continued "But an explanation to that later would be nice, now that you've gone and make me curious."

As their parents began talking about this and that, Noah began to talk about some of the wonders of Hogwarts with Harry and Jessica, but naturally, like their parents, would not tell anything about the start of the year. After taking and enjoying the company, something in his peripheral vision caught Harry's attention. Nudging Jessica he jerked his chin towards the entrance of the platform.

"Where's the fire-extinguisher?" Jessica asked, to which Noah snickered once he saw what they were looking at.

A group of six people with fiery red hair was walking briskly through the platform. But their attention quickly shifted from their looks to what they said once they got closer.

"Packed with muggels, of course." the puggy woman, obviously the mother of the the red-haired-brood said a lot louder than necessary, given how close she kept her children.

"What was the number of the platform, again?" the woman's voice was ringing out over the entire platform. Nick, Camilla and Samuel winced and looked at each other, each thinking the same thing:

"_How subtle of her_."

"Nine and three quarters, mum." the young girl of the brood piped up "Mum, can't I go too?".

"You're not old enough. Now hush." the mother abolished her daughter.

Harry and his group watched as the red heads gathered at the portal to platform nine and three quarter, speaking loudly for all to hear, and looking around, apparently looking for someone. But after a while they all walked through, at which point all four adults said in unison "Weird".

Noah was the first to speak after that.

"That was the Weasley's, the twins are my age, and are the schools prankster-kings"

Samuel and Maria smirked at each other, and Noah was still looking at the portal, so they missed Harry's and Jessica's star-eyed look as well as Camilla's warning finger. When Noah saw what time it was he exclaimed:

"Dad, were gonna miss the train!"

It was four minutes to eleven.

"Oh, my!" Maria gushed, and turning to Harry and Jessica said "Hurry up, now. You don't want to miss your first ride to Hogwarts."

The two families ran through the portal to platform nine and three quarters, helped load Noah's luggage, hugs, kisses and goodbyes were exchanged, and before they knew it, the train departed for Hogsmead.

Harry, Jessica and Noah thronged to almost hang out the window of the compartment they had occupied, waving franticly to their parents, until the station was no longer visible.

"Well, I'm gonna go find my friends. I'll probably see you around Hogwarts." and with that he was off, leaving Harry and Jessica with the compartment to themselves.

"So... Now what?" Jessica asked, looking around the compartment.

Harry shrugged as he closed the door (as Noah had not in his eagerness to find his friends), and said:

"No Idea." He froze. "How long is it till we reach Hogwarts?"

Jessica's eyebrows disappeared under her fringe. "No Idea."

They stood there for a moment, Harry by the door and Jessica by the window, looking at each other. Then Harry shrugged, reached into his jacket pocket and took out a shrunken book, and with a flick threw it at the wall, where it landed on the seat by the window as it returned to it's original size.

"Well, I'm gonna finish reading this, then." He said as he picked up the book to show his sister.

"Animorphis?"

"It's a good book." At Jessica's skeptical look, he continued "It's a guy-book... You wouldn't understand." he finished with a forget-it-motion and sat down and began reading.

Jessica stood in the middle of the compartment for a moment, thinking. Finally she shrugged and walked out without a word, Harry only glanced her way as she closed the door and disappeared down the train.

They knew each other well enough to know that neither had any ill intent with words nor actions, Harry wanted to read his book, and she wanted to explore.

Shortly after Jessica had left, a redhead opened the door to his compartment. Harry looked up from his book, and after observing the other boy, Harry recognized him as one of the redheads from the platform. The boy looked like he could not decide if he should speak to Harry or continue walking, and when the boy saw the book in Harry's lap he started to turn away.

"Can I help you?" Harry asked just as the boy started turning.

"Um... Nah... I'm just... looking for a friend, but I can't find him. And I don't want to sit with my brother's... it's to noisy. And I don't want to sit by myself... it's..."

The boy once more looked at the book in Harry's lap, and started turning again, but Harry stopped him.

"Why don't you sit here? I'm the only one in this compartment... well, me and my sister, but she ran of somewhere."

The boy sneered at Harry, though he did not see it as he closed the book and hitting it against the wall to shrink it again, and pocketed it, causing the boy to drop the sneer before Harry could see it, instead looking at Harry evaluatingly. After a moment he looked down the length of the train, and apparently deciding that he would not find his friend, he exhaled and shrugged.

"Sure, I'm sure I'll see him once we get to Hogwarts." the boy said, as he struggled to get his luggage into the compartment.

Harry got up to help him, asking the boy as he did:

"Do you know how long it'll be until we get there? My parents didn't say, and I forgot to ask."

"Percy said it's something like 6 hours so it's a long ways away yet."

"Oh!" Harry said with wide eyes as they finished with the trunk. "I didn't bring any food."

_Oh well... I can always call Irja_

He thought as he resumed his seat by the window.

"So who's your friend? Oh, I'm Harry by the way." he said as he held out his hand to shake.

The other boy looked startled at Harry for a long moment, long enough for Harry to think the boy wasn't gonna shake his hand. He actually did start to lower his hand before the boy spoke

"Are you Harry Potter? You look nothing like the pictures I've seen."

Harry blinked

_Pictures? Mom never released any pictures of me to the press..._

He shrugged it of when he remembered pictures of his biological father, maybe this boy's family was friends with his biological parents, and he had been shown a picture of them.

Anyway, his father had forbidden them from revealing he was Harry POTTER until Christmas. Though he nor Jessica could understand why it was a secret until then, but apparently not after Christmas...

_Oh, well..."Always speak the truth"_

"I go by the name Harry Azera"

_...just not the whole truth_.

"Oh." The boy said, looking quite disappointed, but a moment later he perked up again. "I'm Ron. Ron Weasley." He held out his hand, and Harry smiled as he shook it. "Do you like Quiddich?"

* * *

When the train finally stopped at Hogsmead Station, Harry stepped down onto the platform with a big smile on his face, the ride here was quite interesting, he had made a friend in Ron (though he was somewhat single-minded about Quiddich, and while Harry liked the sport well enough, he had other interest as well), they had been visited by an over exited brunette who was looking for a toad, and an arrogant blond with his two silent friends, who seamed to have an rivalry with Ron (the blond, Malfoy, had tried to drag Harry into their animosity, but he managed to stay out of it... for now).

Jessica had an enjoyable ride as well, where as Harry had spoken with Ron and pretty much forgotten about time, she had darted from compartment to compartment, chatting with pretty much everyone. She had realized, too, that they had not been given food for the journey by their parents, and the girls she was with at the time insisted to share, making them the best friends she had found during the journey.

Now she was darting to and from through the crowd exiting the train, making her way to Harry.

"Hey!" she said as she slung an arm around his shoulders. "Had any fun?"

"Sure did" he replied with a smile, then he looked over his shoulder at Ron, who looked kinda lost, as if he didn't know if he should stay with Harry or not. "Jessica, meet Ron Weasley, my first friend at Hogwarts. Ron, meet Jessica, my annoyingly-lovingly sister."

"Hello." Jessica said, holding out her hand to shake, with the other still slung around Harry's shoulders.

Ron looked back and forth between them as he shook her hand.

"Are you twins? You look like twins."

Harry and Jessica looked at each other, and with a smirk put their cheeks together and chorused

"Maybe..."

Ron groaned "Just what I need... another Fred and Gorge..."

"His older brothers." Harry explained to Jessica, still with their cheeks together.

"Ah." was the only verbal response from her.

"Firs' Yers, Over here! Over here! Firs Yers, Gather Roun' Now, Firs Yers!" they heard a deep voice call out. Looking around they saw a huge man, almost as wide as he was tall, with black long hair and beard that looked barely cared for. Trotting over to join the other first years, they were lead down a path to where a fleet of boats were anchored.

"No More Then Four Per Boat, Now."

Harry, Jessica and Ron climbed into one boat, but was not joined by anyone else before the giant man spoke up again

"Evry One In? O'Kay! Forward!"

With a small jerk, the boats began to float across the lake, it was a clear night and the lake was perfectly still, looking like a giant mirror. They got their first glimpse of Hogwarts when they rounded a corner, and everyone Ohh-ed and Ahh-ed at the magnificent view they were given.


End file.
